Executive Suite

A film set at the head office of a furniture company. The company's president collapses in the street and dies. He had appointed no deputy and who will take his place is undecided. The board is to meet. There are five men and each is making his own calculation. Shaw is from finance. He looks at the figures; he reads the company's profit through the share price and argues for making production cheaper. Walling is on the manufacturing side. Young, a designer, concerned with quality, and convinced the company is making cheap goods. There are the others too. One from sales, one from the plant, and the secretary who was long at the dead man's side. From there the film takes place across one day. Telephone calls, conversations in corridors, counting votes, a movement in the stock and a meeting late in the afternoon. Nobody is one-dimensional. The narrative gives each candidate his own reasoning and puts none of them entirely in the wrong. What the narrative is interested in is not a company but what work is for: at the end the film sets a choice between the quality of what is made and the share price, and makes its own side plain. The women are not at the edge of the narrative. The dead man's daughter, Walling's wife and the secretary are the people who decide which way the votes go. A known feature of the film is on its soundtrack. There is no music at all; not in the titles, not in the scenes. The only thing heard is a tower bell, an unusual choice for the period. The cast is large and made up of the best known names of its day. William Holden, Barbara Stanwyck, Fredric March, June Allyson and Shelley Winters are in the cast. Robert Wise directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes corporate drama that rests on dialogue. Who it is not for: anyone looking for movement; the film takes place almost entirely in offices and the final speech is openly a sermon.