Why Doesn't Bigelow's .......
Secretary just go to the party with him, they're obviously a couple.
shareTwo reasons:
1). It was 1974, and a much different era. It was obvious that both Dan and Lorrie wanted to keep their affair secret. Perhaps Dan was married. Maybe Duncan frowned on executives carrying on with their secretaries.
2). Delightful as it might have been, it would have been a bit risque for Lorrie to show up in the party room wearing only a man's dress shirt and pantyhose :)
AE36
Your #2 makes no sense. Why would she go half clothed. No one suggested that
shareI'm just going with the logic of the film.
Lorrie is in her shirt and pantyhose outfit when Dan makes his fake phone call. He tells Lorrie that "helps on the way".
Yet despite the fact that they want to keep their affair secret, Lorrie makes no attempt to get dressed, even through her clothes are in the same room.
Evidently she plans to be rescued in just control top pantyhose and her bosses shirt-- and be escorted down to the lobby in full view of everyone.
So by that logic, it makes perfect sense that if Dan and Lorrie could have somehow escaped from the apartment, they might have ended up in the party room with Lorrie still in her sex kitten outfit, with her nyloned ass hanging out for all to see.
AE36
Not that she did not look nice dressed like that, but I did think that if the worse did come to the worst, you would not want to be found half undressed: bad form.
shareae36 -- 1974 wasn't that much different an era. People had affairs all the time. What they were doing was nothing unusual or by then particularly unacceptable socially. Also, there is absolutely no indication Bigelow was married. Maybe Duncan frowned upon intra-office relationships, though there's no indication of that either. There really is no evident reason why he and Lorrie shouldn't have been open about their relationship. Just one of those plot points designed to set up their final dramatic scene, and how they got into that spot (Bigelow having the phones disconnected).
shareNot buying it, Hobnob.
Throw out all the speculation about it being a different era, etc. For the sake of argument I'll give you that and start from there.
Dan and Lorrie's own conversation from the film makes it clear beyond any doubt that they don't want their affair to be made public.
When we first see Lorrie and Dan in the inner apartment where Lorrie is in just a shirt and pantyhose, Dan asks her,
"What do I tell the boss when he asks where I've been all this time?' Lorrie tell him to say that his secretary "had an urgent personal problem".
Earlier, Dan had made an excuse as to why he had to go back to the office-- a letter "had to go out...". He makes this excuse to Duncan and its also mentioned to the other secretary by Lorrie. The other secretary says had she left earlier, she could have missed him and Lorrie says she doesn't mind, she did not have plans. So the other secretary doesn't know about the affair and both Dan and Lorrie are making excuses to be alone after hours.
Still later, when Dan tells Lorrie the truth about the fireman and the phones, she says "at least they'll never find out about us...".
Seems pretty plain that they are having a secret affair and don't want people to know or suspect. Granted that reason is not really stated but its easy to guess.
Which brings us around in a big circle to my original point: If Dan and Lorrie want to keep their affair secret, why doesn't Lorrie get dressed when they become aware of the fire? Lorrie believes for a time that they will be rescued. Seems an odd outfit to be rescued in when your clothes are right there.
AE36
Not buying what, ae?
Apparently your reply is intended to prove they were keeping their affair secret. Well, yeah. Who said otherwise?
I'm guessing you didn't understand my sentence when I wrote before,
There really is no evident reason why he and Lorrie shouldn't have been open about their relationship.
and somehow misinterpreted that as meaning that they weren't keeping their relationship a secret.
Whatever the reason for your confusion, no one disputes they're keeping it secret -- that point is made like a sledgehammer in the film.
What I'm saying, to repeat myself, is that there's no evident reason why they had to keep the affair secret. Again: neither one is married; the social mores of 1974 certainly didn't make an affair some terrible social faux pas; nothing is said about Duncan forbidding or frowning on intra-office affairs. The point is, nothing is said about why they're keeping the relationship secret. So, absent any external problem (being married, risking social censure, an office rule, etc.) the only conclusion is that they chose to keep it secret, presumably for privacy reasons. Fair enough -- but they do make a big thing out of it, and without any explanation. Personally I think it would have been better had the script provided a reason for their behavior, but it didn't. That's why I said that ultimately this is a plot conceit designed simply to set them up for the scene where they get trapped because Bigelow is so concerned about secrecy (and, more understandably, privacy during sex) that he had the phones shut off.
As to your question about why she doesn't get dressed, I agree, in the context this seems a little odd. Aside from wanting to be dressed if you're being rescued, you'd be better off having something on if you wanted to escape (better to get burned clothes than burned skin). Of course, if you're faced with a choice between embarrassment or burning to death, that's kind of a no-brainer (and firefighters rescue people in all states of undress), and besides, dressed or undressed, being found together would certainly tip off everyone to the affair anyway -- the two of them up there alone for hours. On the other hand, it could be argued that she simply froze into inaction when faced with the flames -- Bigelow certainly did. Instead of trying to get out before the fire got too bad, he pushes her back into the office where they just sit, with him knowing no rescuers were coming. His deception in not telling her the truth until it was too late, and his bad judgment all around, make him a rather unsympathetic dope to me.
Of course, the real reason she didn't get dressed was so the audience could see an attractive, half-naked woman for a while. This is a movie, after all. share
Susan Flannery never struck me as attractive dressed or half-naked. And I absolutely hated her character the one time I suffered watching "The Moneychangers."
shareOh, I thought SF was very cute and sexy in this. But she certainly aged terribly! Even so, she looks better than she would have after being scraped off the sidewalk.
shareTwo points:
1. I never thought why Lorrie did not get dressed. But now that it has been raised, I assume she was just too scared. As you said, she may have been frozen into inaction.
2. As to keeping the affair secret, I assume it was a situation where Bigelow was a department head in the company (in charge of public relations) and Lorrie was a secretary- a lower level position), and thus it may have been considered inappropriate for an employee in a position of power (Wagner) to be having an open affair with a lower level employee, maybe even a female reporting to him. Who knows? It sounds good to me (lol).
1. Yes, I never thought of this dressing/undressing business either. I guess in the circumstances that's not something you'd immediately think of or worry about.
2. You might be right about Bigelow...although again, we don't see or hear anything that would seem to compel him to keep it secret. Maybe they felt that if their affair were known it would undermine his authority in the office and leave him open to accusations of favoritism, or make her work life more difficult among her co-workers. That's along the lines of what you're suggesting, manage, and seems the most logical reason.
Still, being half-naked and having an affair so secret that the idiot boyfriend cuts off all communication with the outside world, thus insuring their demise, are plot contrivances just a bit too cute for their own good.
Of course, if they made this film today they'd have cellphones...unless he took them and tossed them onto her desk outside, to make sure they were really undisturbed and, after sex, could properly rest in peace.