The Key (Symbol)
The key to the apartment is a central symbol in the movie. It represents not only the secret affairs that the businessmen are conducting behind closed doors, but also a metaphorical key to Baxter's rising up the executive ladder. By handing over the key to his apartment, Baxter shows that he is someone to be trusted, and is rewarded in kind with another key, to the executive washroom. Baxter's apartment key represents his trustworthiness and his stock in the corrupt system, and the key to the executive washroom symbolizes the rewards that come with abiding by those unspoken corporate rules.
At the end, when Baxter asserts himself and finally takes a stand, he hands back the key to the executive washroom. At first Sheldrake thinks that it's the key to the apartment and that Baxter is agreeing to stay quiet and submissive to Sheldrake's wishes. When he realizes it is the key to the washroom, it becomes clear that Baxter is resigning, that he has no interest in buying into a corrupt system anymore. Here, the key to the executive washroom becomes a symbol for Baxter becoming his own man, a mensch, a "human being."
The Cracked Mirror (Symbol)
Frank Kubelik’s cracked compact mirror is a multifaceted symbol. Firstly, as evidence that Fran is Sheldrake’s mistress, the mirror represents for Baxter that Fran is a more complicated person than he had suspected. He realizes that the mirror belongs to her and is crestfallen to realize that the girl he so idealizes at the office is sleeping with his married boss. Additionally, it represents Fran's own fragmented psychology and her inner turmoil. When Baxter points out the crack, she tells him, "I like it that way. Makes me look the way I feel." Thus, the mirror is a symbol for the way that Fran feels like damaged goods, and doesn't know how to value and respect herself. It also, in fragmenting her reflection, represents the way that she feels conflicted and fragmented by the affair and by her personal issues.
Crowds (Motif)
From the start of the film, we know that we are in New York City, a notoriously crowded and bustling place. The first line of the movie is Baxter listing statistics about the city, including its population. We see the city from above, then images of busy streets, and a crowded lobby of an office building, then rows of desks of some of its employees. However, in spite of all the people around, Baxter is a lonely person and struggles to find connection. At the office Christmas party, after learning that Fran is sleeping with Sheldrake, Baxter walks past throngs of his coworkers having a raucous party, then past the rows of desks in the office. This image represents the alienation that Baxter can feel as an individual lost in the clamor. Later, he posts up at a bar and drinks away his feelings while people crowd around him. Then, at the end, as he's packing up his apartment, Dr. Dreyfuss invites him over for a New Years' Party, but Baxter politely declines. People surround Baxter, but he never quite feels able to join. In The Apartment, crowds represent alienation and disillusionment more than they do togetherness.
$100 bill (Symbol)
After Fran confronts him about the fact that he's had a string of affairs, Sheldrake does little to pacify her past reassuring her that he loves her, and eventually handing her a $100 bill as a "Christmas present." The bill symbolizes the executive's heartlessness, and the fact that Sheldrake doesn't value Fran in the way that she wants to be valued. In Sheldrake's logic, everything can be fixed with money and bribes, even matters of the heart. The bill makes Fran feel cheap, as though their relationship is not romantic at all, but strictly transactional. It is this $100 bill, a plain symbol of Sheldrake's irresponsibility and carelessness, that pushes Fran over the edge. She puts it in an envelope and takes a whole bottle of sleeping pills. By turning the bill into a stand-in for a suicide note, Fran makes a show of how Sheldrake's carelessness has hurt her, made her feel worthless, and robbed her of her will to live.
Cards (Symbol)
The very last line of the movie is Fran telling Baxter to “shut up and deal.” She has just left a party with Sheldrake to spend her New Year's Eve with Baxter, a man she can be sure loves and respects her. After she arrives at his apartment, she pulls out Baxter's deck of cards, the same deck that he pulled out when she was recovering from the overdose just a few days before. When they first played cards, they did not have a particular symbolic meaning, but now, after all they have each been through, the cards represent Fran and Baxter's connection to one another, and their willingness to take a chance on one another. The games they play with the cards are a strategic gamble, a game of chance. Now, when Baxter has lost his job and Fran has run away from the executive whom she was going to marry, the two lovers are taking a chance on each other and on life. The cards symbolize both that the two of them are going to have more control over their lives—acting as dealers, rather than simple cogs—and also that they are taking a chance, jumping into the unknown, together.
