Design for Living (1933)

Design for Living
Directed by Ernst Lubitsch
Written by Ben Hecht from a play by Noel Coward
1933/US
Paramount Pictures
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/Criterion Channel

Gilda Farrell: We’re going to concentrate on work – your work. My work doesn’t count. I think you boys have a great deal of talent; but, too much ego. You spend one day working and a whole month bragging. Gentlemen, there are going to be few changes. I’m going to jump up and down on your ego. I’m going to criticize your work with a baseball bat. I’m going to tell you every day how bad your stuff is until you get something good and if it’s good I’m going to tell you it’s rotten till you get something better. I’m going to be a mother of the arts. – – No sex.
George Curtis, Tom Chambers: No.
Gilda Farrell: It’s a gentlemen’s agreement.

Fortunately Gilda is no gentleman and Ernst Lubitsch takes his celebrated touch just about as far as it can go in this delightful, sophisticated comedy.

The setting is Paris, France.  As the story starts, Gilda Farrell (Miriam Hopkins) is drawing a caricature of two young men who are sleeping in their train seats.  These are George Curtis (Gary Cooper), a painter, and Tom Chambers (Fredric March), a playwright.  Gilda is a commercial artist who works for strait-laced Max Plunkett (Edward Everett Horton).  Both men start flirting with Gilda in French.  But soon enough it comes out that they are all Americans.

The two men share a flat in Paris.  Both fall in love with Gilda and she with them, but Gilda can’t decide who she likes most.  Finally, she decides they should remain platonic friends. She will move in and act as taskmaster and muse for the artistic endeavors of the men.

Before you know it George has a gallery show and Tom’s play is produced in London. When Tom has to travel to participate in the production, George is left alone with Gilda. Thereafter, all bets are off.

Turn about is fair play and the year after making the two-women-love-one man triangle in Trouble in Paradise (1932), Lubitsch pulled off an even more audacious two-men-love-one-woman triangle in this film. And all the parties remain so civilized!  The Ben Hecht screenplay sparkles as bright as the acting and direction. Very, very Pre-Code and highly recommended.