Design for Living February 26, 2006
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films, 1930s, Ernst Lubitsch , trackback
“Immorality may be fun, but it isn’t fun enough to take the place of one hundred percent virtue and three square meals a day.”
The “Lubitsch Touch” is an often cited cinematic gift that director Ernst Lubitsch employed to give his films an unparalleled wit and charm throughout the 1930s and early 1940s. Lubitsch directed comedies that still retain their vitality and charisma, sixty or seventy years after they were made. The characters in his films have a knack for light humor that exhibits wry sophistication without crossing the line to snobbery. I was not around when Lubitsch made films, but watching them makes me wish I were and that I could have been exactly like one of the many characters found therein. That, to me, is the “Lubitsch Touch.”
Design for Living came during an especially fruitful string of films for Lubitsch. The 1933 film followed Trouble in Paradise, a wonderful comedy about the debonair thief Gaston Monescu, and preceded another highly regarded film, The Merry Widow. Lubitsch and screenwriter Ben Hecht replaced the British characters from Noel Coward’s play with three Americans, all living in Paris. A young Gary Cooper plays the struggling painter, Fredric March is the playwright who “writes unproduced plays,” and Lubitsch favorite Miriam Hopkins is the object of both their affections. Edward Everett Horton, later to be the narrator of “Fractured Fairy Tales” on the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, is Ms. Hopkins’ boss and suitor.
While Design for Living falls into the category of great films, what really sets it apart is how fun it is to see actual adult and grown-up comedy in a classic American film. It was made after the implementation of the Production Code, but apparently before it became as strict as it would be the next thirty-plus years. This allowed Lubitsch and Hecht to get away with Hopkins’ discussion about sleeping with Cooper the day before and, then, March earlier in the present day (!) and, also, for Cooper and March to make a “gentleman’s agreement” where the three would co-exist but with “no sex.” The whole film is filled with mature, yet almost screwball comedy that Hollywood has struggled to consistently produce for years, especially in today’s current cinema.
The performances here are all incredibly fun to watch. Cooper and March make a terrific team and really give the impression they’ve been great friends and have no intention of letting their attraction for Hopkins come between them, even if they can’t make good on their “agreement.” Miriam Hopkins is perfect here, as well, and makes the viewer see how two men can nearly break up a friendship over her affection. I’m really not sure why Hopkins never became a bigger star, but then again Hollywood was even more arbitrary back then than today in selecting its movie stars to feed into the movie machine. Regardless, this film, along with Trouble in Paradise show how lovely and sophisticated an actress she was. Edward Everett Horton also manages to be very funny when he needs to, never more so than when he’s attending March’s play in London and hears the line I’ve quoted at the beginning here, one which he had separately told both March and Cooper at the beginning of the film regarding their trysts with Hopkins.
Billy Wilder, who wrote the screenplay for Lubitsch’s film Ninotchka, often said that he tried to duplicate the “Lubitsch Touch” in several of his films and was never able to completely succeed. While Wilder almost always injected a knowing sense of cynicism into his comedies, Lubitsch chose to give his films an elegance and warmth that remains refreshing today. In my opinion, Lubitsch and Wilder were the best comedic filmmakers Hollywood has seen and I’m glad we have both of their films to enjoy for generations to come. I only wish the “Lubitsch Touch” would inspire more filmmakers to produce similar types of sophisticated comedies.
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