Schaffner came from TV, and while he has few of the obnoxious visual affectations of the TV - trained director, he tends to restrict the most significant actions and
relationships in his films to
spatial arenas that could be served
very adequately by the tube rather than the Panavision screen: the real convention hustle in The Best Man takes place in hotel rooms, hallways, and basements; the tensest moments in his strange and (to me)
very sympathetic medieval mini-epic The War Lord are confined to a small soundstage clearing or that besieged tower; the battle scenes in Patton are hardly clumsy, but the real show is George C. Scott; and Nicholas and Alexandra comes alive only after the royal family has been penned up under the watchful eyes of Ian Holm and then Alan Webb, far from the splendor of St. Petersburg or the shambles of the Great War.
However, choosing the name «1 Apartment for 2 Women 4 Men» is not only based on such an apparent fact, but also because we believe that this concise statement, which lists and juxtaposes the
spatial structure, numbers and genders, although might be seemingly expressionless, it will help us to confirm and emphasize that, the
very thing that determines our cognition and imagination is always an undefined
relationship in a specific space.