Excerpt from Conversations with Wilder
If you do a picture like George Stevens — he did that very famous picture A Place in the Sun. Now, there is a district attorney in that picture who limps. I talked to somebody and said, “It’s a very fine picture, but he did not have to make justice itself limp.” That was too allegorical. That was not good.
No wonder his films were so wonderful. Imagine breaking down a film into such small elements. Wilder was a very, very bright man. I have seen A Place in the Sun many times, but I never really noted the symbolism of the limp except maybe on a subliminal level.