Design for Living

#8 in my ranking of Ernst Lubitsch’s filmography.

Another hit from Lubitsch. Based on a play by Noel Coward (though, apparently retaining virtually none of the original dialogue), Design for Living is Lubitsch’s final pre-Code film and the most frank of his about sex. Of course, frank about sex for Lubitsch is just a couple of explicit mentions of sex between characters while the rest of the time he’s using double entendre and wit to tell this story of the battle between the sexes. While perhaps not the very top tier of Lubitsch’s work, it’s still a very fun little look at an unusual romantic triangle.

Tom (Fredric March) and George (Gary Cooper) are a pair of bohemian friends living in Paris when they meet Gilda (Miriam Hopkins) on a train. After two hours exchanging insults, the three are inseparable and develop a deep friendship. Tom is a playwright who has had none of his plays performed. George is an artist who has never sold a single painting. Gilda is a commercial artist who draws Napoleon in underwear for an advertising agency run by Max (Edward Everett Horton) who has, for five years, pined uselessly after Gilda, a man who decides to use his position as Gilda’s friend to try and scare off both Tom and George in separate conversations where he uses the same lines of practiced dialogue. George, of course, steals the dialogue for his play.

The wrinkle of the situation is that Gilda loves both Tom and George equally. So, she comes up with an ideal situation. She will live with both in their grimy little apartment, but there will be no sex (there’s heavy implication that she has sex with both of them before this). Instead, she will be a patron of the arts. She will work with them to create great art, and then she will help them sell it. She first succeeds with George, ironing out the problems in his play and getting in front of London’s premier theatrical agent, and getting George on a train for London to help supervise rehearsals. It’s the break in the trio that undoes everything. Left alone with Tom for weeks, Gilda gives in to her affection for him and they move into a new place, telling George through a letter.

George’s play is an instant smash, even attracting Max to attend a play where we get what might be my biggest laugh from a Lubitsch film when he hears the line he said to George earlier in the play itself. Max gleefully tells George about Gilda’s situation, happy to offer hurt to a rival even if he lost Gilda to Tom. Things turn more dramatic and complicated when George returns to Paris to visit Gilda. There, with Tom in Nice to paint a commissioned portrait having hit success just a bit later than his friend, George and Gilda reconnect with Gilda admitting that she could never let him go. She decides that she will run away with George, but Tom comes home too early, and she’s confronted with her indecision between the two men. In order to save herself the choice, she runs off and marries Max.

There’s definitely some class element going on here, but it seems to be more about money acting as a separator and anchor than anything else. It’s a very storybook idea that doesn’t get serious attention because, you know, having a story where our characters literally starve because they can’t afford food isn’t much fun. Instead, make it about how they can’t have clean shirts. This is my only real problem with the film, dallying into bohemianism with such a rose-eyed view of the whole situation that it beggars belief to a certain extent.

And the ending falls back into it, but with that perfect Lubitsch Touch, papering over all of my problems all at once. George and Tom, bitter at Gilda’s marriage, show up at a house party Max is throwing for a concrete magnate. She hates it all, the show she has to constantly put on to play stupid party games for boring people, and then George and Tom show up. She remembers the last time she was truly happy, and they’re off together, agreeing to continue their “gentlemen’s agreement” of no sex and all art once again. It’s a return to this bohemian ideal without sex, where art is king and relationships are preserved. It’s also the return to the comic happiness for our trio of characters, providing a nice comic touch to the ending that leaves the audience with a smile on their faces.

This is more of a confection from Lubitsch than his other confections that have a bit weightier character stuff to build off of, but the character stuff is solid enough and the Lubitsch Touch is on grand display at the same time. I keep using the word to describe Lubitsch’s work, but it really is just delightful. That airy, funny aura he brings to his films is just infectious and wonderful. Helped in no small part by a game cast, particularly March as George (Cooper seems to coast, quite effectively, on his sex appeal by comparison) and with Hopkins having fun as Gilda while Horton plays his normal befuddled routine to fun comic effect, Design for Living is another small gem in Lubitsch’s work from the 1930s.

Rating: 3.5/4