It’s a very rare thing in movies when a significant character realizes that he/she is very unhappy in a job or in a marriage and wants very much to leave, and yet it doesn’t happen because he/she can’t afford it. I can think of two films in which this has happened. One, The Purple Rose of Cairo when Mia Farrow realizes she has no choice but to go back to brutish husband Danny Aiello because she has no place else to go. And two, From Here To Eternity when Deborah Kerr decides to return to the U.S. with her disgraced husband because she knows her relationship with Burt Lancaster is over and she has no other way to survive.

I’ve seen this happen a lot in real life. People are miserable and want out but they make do because they don’t make enough and/or they haven’t found another job and they don’t want to sleep in their car. But in the movies people are always quitting and leaving for the reasons we can all admire or agree with. And they always live in much nicer apartments than their jobby-job salaries could possibly accommodate. And they drive much nicer cars than people in their economic station could afford in real life.