Design for Living (1933)
- General info
- Available formats
- Synopsis:
- In this chic comedy adapted from Noel Coward's stage play, two Americans sharing a flat in Paris, playwright Tom Chambers (Fredric March) and painter George Curtis (Gary Cooper), both fall for free-spirited Gilda Farrell (Miriam Hopkins). When she can't make up her mind which one of them she prefers, she proposes a "gentleman's agreement": She will move in with them as a friend and critic of their work, but will not have a relationship with either of them. But when Tom goes to London to supervise a production of one of his plays, leaving Gilda alone with George, how long will this gentleman's agreement last?
- Actors:
- Fredric March, Gary Cooper, Miriam Hopkins, Edward Everett Horton, Franklin Pangborn, Isabel Jewell, Jane Darwell, Wyndham Standing, Cosmo Kyrle Bellew, Lionel Belmore, Thomas Braidon, Nora Cecil, Emile Chautard, Mathilde Comont, Adrienne D'Ambricourt, James Donlan, Harry Dunkinson, Estelle Etterre, Helena Phillips Evans, Charles K. French
- Directors:
- Ernst Lubitsch
- Producers:
- Ernst Lubitsch
- Writers:
- Noël Coward, Ben Hecht, Samuel Hoffenstein
- Genres:
- Classics, Comedy, Drama, Romance
- Collections:
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Reviews (1) of Design for Living
Pre-Code and Proud of It - Design for Living review by griggs
There’s something genuinely thrilling about watching a pre-Code Hollywood film and realising they could just… say “sex.” Out loud. On screen. In 1933. Ernst Lubitsch takes Noël Coward’s verbal farce and runs with it — Miriam Hopkins as the magnetic Gilda, twirling both a playwright (Fredric March) and a painter (Gary Cooper) around her little finger in Paris, and doing so entirely on her own terms. Not a femme fatale. Just a woman who wants both of them, and why shouldn’t she?
Design for Living is exactly the kind of filmmaking I want to reward — the Lubitsch Touch is a genuine directorial achievement, and the innuendo is relentless in the best possible way. But brilliant chunks don’t always a coherent whole make. The comedy feels stagey (Coward bleeding through, perhaps), the men are staggeringly shallow, and the chemistry between March and Cooper with Hopkins never quite ignites. By the end I’d admired it considerably more than I’d enjoyed it. Charming, risqué, surprisingly modern — and yet, somehow, a bit of a chore.