Watch and Learn: The 10 Greatest Business Movies

You've Never Seen

1. The Apartment (1960)

Jack Lemmon is a nebbishy company man who will do anything for a
promotion-including supplying his bachelor pad to the philandering men who
run the corporation. As the key to his apartment becomes the key to his
success, Lemmon's character is bemired in an ethical quandary involving the
company Christmas party, an office with his name on the door, and a sweet
elevator girl played by Shirley MacLaine. A great flick for anyone seeking a
clever way to keep his job in this unpredictable economy.

2. Desk Set (1957)

The opening credits announce that the filmmakers "gratefully acknowledge
the cooperation and assistance of the International Business Machines
Corporation." You soon see why: A media company is installing room-size
computers to assist its research and payroll departments. Spencer Tracy is
the IBM transition guy in charge of Katharine Hepburn's research
department, where she and her "girls" are in a tizzy over being replaced by a
machine-which today, incidentally, would be known as Google.

3. Dodsworth (1936)
Motor company tycoon Samuel Dodsworth has just retired, and he's ready to
enjoy life. His wife is gamboling around Europe, and Sam does his best to
join in. But Dodsworth finds the transition from powerful boss to man of
leisure awkward and uneasy-after pouring himself into his work for so long,
even his wealth doesn't save him from feeling like a lifetime prisoner who
can't hack it on the outside. In the title role, Walter Huston gives a knockout
performance from which the current flock of CEOs turned outcasts could
learn a lot.

4. The Efficiency Expert (1991)

In this quirky Australian film, Anthony Hopkins plays a taciturn consultant
hired to "modernize" a moccasin company. But his all-business measures
don't jibe with the employees, a tight-knit, slightly loony, set-in-their-ways
clan. When he erects partitions between the seamstresses to prevent them
from gossiping all day, they just smile and take them down. Russell Crowe
has a small part as a smarmy up-and-comer bent on importing slippers from
Japan. A weird, highly enjoyable movie about the value of loyal employees.

5. Executive Suite (1954)

What happens when the president of a major corporation drops dead? A flock
of underlings jockey for the job in a pyrotechnic power struggle. The setting
is a furniture company's mahogany-paneled front office, teeming with egos,
stock scams, blackmailers, backstabbers, love affairs, and a corporate femme
fatale-the founder's daughter and a major shareholder who was sleeping with
the deceased. In the end, it's nothing more than good, juicy fun, and
nobody's 401(k) gets hurt.

6. Fitzcarraldo (1982)
The most successful businesspeople are obsessive about everything they do.
Fitzcarraldo dreams of building an opera house in the jungles of South
America. The story of his quest to make a fortune in the rubber business (to
fund the opera house) is a portrait of a businessman to be admired from
afar, not to be employed by: His madman scheme involves a spectacular
attempt to drag a giant steamboat over a mountain to reach an unharvested
forest.

7. The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1956)

Gregory Peck has a lot on his mind-a promotion to a powerful and high-
paying executive position, a hysterical wife, a lovechild in Italy from an affair
during the war. The new job means more time away from his family, but
they aren't much fun anyway. Still, he grapples with the question of how
much of his life to give to his work. The film stands up well at a time when
companies are breaking a sweat trying to appear flexible and family-friendly.

8. Other People's Money (1991)

"I love money more than the things it buys," squeals the unctuous corporate
raider Lawrence "Larry the Liquidator" Garfield, played by Danny DeVito.
Larry targets a small New England manufacturing company run by a
grandfatherly Gregory Peck. As Larry unapologetically lusts after a sweet
deal, Peck's stepdaughter/ lawyer hisses, "In 10 years, they'll be studying
you at the Wharton School. They'll call it the Garfield Era and rinse their
mouths out when they leave the room." Ten years from now they'll call it the
Enron Era. No, the WorldCom Era. Or the Arthur Andersen Era. The Martha
Era has a nice ring . . .

9. Save the Tiger (1973)

Lemmon nabbed the Oscar for Best Actor this time (beating Brando,
Nicholson, Pacino, and Redford) for his portrayal of Harry Stoner, the down-
and-out owner of a clothing factory. In this 36-hour snapshot of his life,
Harry arranges for an arsonist to burn down his factory for insurance money,
hires strippers to entertain his clients, and picks up a horny flower child. A
depressing but ultimately uplifting account of a businessman being
asphyxiated by the life he chose for himself.

10. Silkwood (1983)

Based on the story of Karen Silkwood, a lab analyst and union activist at the
Kerr-McGee plutonium processing plant, who died in 1974. Believing that
company negligence was endangering the lives of employees and clients-
alleged corporate misbehavior that makes the recent wave of accounting
scandals look like child's play-Silkwood set out to blow the whistle to a New
York Times reporter. On her way to the rendezvous, she perished in a
mysterious one-car accident. Meryl Streep uses equal parts naïveté and
indignation in one of her greatest and least heralded