Design for Living
1933 Directed by Ernst Lubitsch
Synopsis
Design for Living is a comedy play written by Noël Coward in 1932. It concerns a trio of artistic characters, Gilda, Otto and Leo, and their complicated three-way relationship. Originally written to star Lynn Fontanne, Alfred Lunt and Coward, it was premiered on Broadway, partly because its risqué subject matter was thought unacceptable to the official censor in London. It was not until 1939 that a London production was presented.
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David's Movie entry #4: March 17th, 2013
In Memory of David EisenCooper, March, Hopkins, Lubitsch, Coward, and Hect. The opening credits ring off like a game of "20 questions" with the question being asked "What would be the perfect cast/crew for a pre-code comedy?". The two surprising crew roles that I did not have prior knowledge of before watching the film was its association to a Noel Coward play and Ben Hect being the screenwriter involved. Since watching it I have discovered that Coward's play did not necessarily have a big role for the film. Lubitsch took his story with the help of Hect and made it cinematic while making it in his own vision.
Ben Hect was a…
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From my new column at MUBI:
“It’s true we have a gentlemen’s agreement,” susurrates a suggestively bed-strewn Miriam Hopkins, “but unfortunately I am no gentlemen.” Indeed: never before or since has the fulcrum of a three-way so iconically longed or been longed for, soaking up desire like a sponge. Design for Living, of course, has enjoyed a now 80-year legacy on the promise of its barely muffled libertine sensibility, that same vague aura of licentiousness in which nearly every remotely racy pre-Code comic romance is anachronistically steeped. Design for Living certainly makes use of the luxury of candor—sex as a subject is plainly on the table here, explicated without recourse to euphemism—but sex as an act nevertheless retains the power…
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I'm essentially a neophyte when it comes to pre-Code cinema, so I was surprised by the raciness of this Lubitsch comedy - sex is explicitly referenced and implicitly depicted as a means of artistic inspiration. Miriam Hopkins makes for a more progressive heroine than most present-day rom-coms can offer, being smart, sexy, and (ultimately) not punished for wanting more out of her relationships than what is considered conventionally appropriate. Lubitsch's approach to comedy is really refreshing - his pacing isn't breakneck like that of Hawks's screwball masterpieces, but the lines hit just in time to keep the mood buoyant. Even his silent gags (such as the train-car meet-cute at this film's opening) are small delights unto themselves.
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Oh, what a wonderful pre-code Hollywood film!
OMG. How did Ernst Lubitsch get away with it???? A threesome in the 1933 where the audience is told to root for a love affair where a woman is in a relationship with two men! This would even be scandalous today!
Yet it is strange why it is such a huge problem for most people. We love many friends at the same time. We love all of our children at the same time. Why could not a woman (or a man) fall in love with two men during their lifetime? It is the same kind of love; the "only" difference is that it is also sexual.
To pretend that a person will only…
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One of the best classic comedies I've seen. Design for Living was released the year before It Happened One Night, and though that film ranks as one of my favourite romantic comedies of all time, this film actually beats it in terms of modernity. It's sexually liberal even compared to most romantic comedies put out today and that makes it endlessly refreshing. It helps, of course, that the dialogue and acting crackles with wit and Lubitsch directs the hell out of the film.
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Film #39 of Cinebro's "It Was Only a Matter of Time Before I Got to the Early Sex Comedies" Challenge
Well, now. People talk about violent movies like Howard Hawks' Scarface as the reason behind Hollywood's enforcement of the puritanical Hays Code in the 1930s, but I have to wonder how many members of the moral police must have fainted at the sight of this one. And what makes Ernst Lubitsch's Design for Living so presumably scandalous? No need to mince words: it's a bawdy little number about a threesome.
Yep. Threesome. In 1932. Commence fainting.
Gary Cooper, Fredric March, and Miriam Hopkins play a trio of ex-pat bohemian artistes bumming around "Lost Generation" Paris. After the trio have a…
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Spine #592 of "Criterion Collection".
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“Immorality may be fun, but not enough to take the place of one hundred percent virtue and three square meals a day.”
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The leads in this menage-a-trois are charismatic and have great chemistry, and the frank and brazen references to sex would be conspicuous in films made even 25 years later. It had most of the wit and elegance of the couple other Lubitsch films (a director I'm fast becoming a big fan of), but not quite the heart.
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So Darling. So Funny. So Great. So chock full of Noel Coward designed sexual innuendo and charm:
George Curtis: I haven’t got a clean shirt to my name.
Tom Chambers: Why a clean shirt? What’s up? A romance?
George Curtis: I’m not talking pajamas, just a clean shirt.A perfectly perfect pre-code riot. I’m in looooooove….
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Beautiful and organic plot, charismatic acting and a razor-sharp sense of humor!
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David's Movie entry #4: March 17th, 2013
In Memory of David EisenCooper, March, Hopkins, Lubitsch, Coward, and Hect. The opening credits ring off like a game of "20 questions" with the question being asked "What would be the perfect cast/crew for a pre-code comedy?". The two surprising crew roles that I did not have prior knowledge of before watching the film was its association to a Noel Coward play and Ben Hect being the screenwriter involved. Since watching it I have discovered that Coward's play did not necessarily have a big role for the film. Lubitsch took his story with the help of Hect and made it cinematic while making it in his own vision.
Ben Hect was a…
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First time I saw this, years ago, I found it to be rather minor Lubitsch, and while I still don't put it up there with the tippity-top (and Gary Cooper is still a drag), I enjoyed it so much more this time around. Miriam Hopkins is simply the BEST, all at once seductive, charming, and bawdy, and where I might have formerly been disappointed that they don't revel quite as much in the presumed premise, the path here has a nice expanse to it.
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It still rings.
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"It still rings."