Design for Living (1933) [The Criterion Collection] – Blu-ray Disc

****/****Image
A
Sound B
Extras A+

starring
Fredric March, Gary Cooper, Miriam Hopkins, Edward Everett Horton

screenplay
by Ben Hecht, based on the play by Noel Coward

directed
by Ernst Lubitsch

Design1

by
Walter Chaw
The impulse to call the work of Ernst Lubitsch
"frothy" and "bubbly" and otherwise insubstantial (a
practice excoriated, rightfully so, by film scholar William Paul on
Criterion's Blu-ray release of Design for Living)
obscures
the fact that none of Lubitsch's romantic masterpieces would carry any
kind of
resonance without an essential heart of darkness and decay. The
oft-invoked
"Lubitsch Touch"–that well-circulated anecdote that Billy Wilder hung
the words "What Would Lubitsch Do" above his office
door–suggests to me the wellspring of the asshole element in Wilder's
works:
the idea that Wilder was just Hitchcock undercover, with Lubitsch
influencing both
directors in ways obvious and not so and not in terms of a
"light"
touch so much as a decidedly bitter one. Take my favourite Lubitsch
film, Trouble
in Paradise
, which begins with a trash barge in the middle
of the night in
a Venice we don't see again until Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look
Now
. The
picture proceeds to document the love affair between two professional
thieves
and the innocent woman who falls victim to them. In that, there's
a direct reference to hated President Hoover's deep-in-the-Depression
platitude
that "prosperity is right around the corner," offered in piercing
irony for a cash-strapped audience for whom the theatre had most likely
just lowered
their
admission to a dime. The "Lubitsch Touch," indeed:
edged and between the ribs before you know it's being brandished.

RUNNING TIME
91 minutes
MPAA
Not Rated
ASPECT
RATIO(S)

1.33:1 (1080p/MPEG-4)
LANGUAGES
English 1.0 LPCM
SUBTITLES
English
SDH
REGION
A
DISC
TYPE

BD-50
STUDIO
Criterion

Applied to the full-on, robust sex comedy Design
for
Living
, Lubitsch's touch is felt in lines like, "A bicycle
seat would
be hard on Lady Godiva's historical assets," and, "It was good to hear
some of the names you called me–I haven't heard them since I left
mother and father." The picture details a ménage a trois involving industrial
artist Gilda (Trouble in Paradise's Miriam
Hopkins), struggling painter George (Gary Cooper), and Gary's aspiring
playwright buddy Tom (Fredric March), the trio deciding out of mutual
affection to
live together in Bohemian Paris and focus their attention on the boys'
careers to the exclusion of sex.
Gilda declares herself their mother, making her sackless admirer Max
(Edward
Horton) the father from whom George and Tom will Oedipally steal mom's
affections. Of course it ends in sex (both moments of seduction are
immensely
erotic–the first especially, as Gilda reclines on a bed and sighs,
"It's
true we have a gentlemen's agreement, but unfortunately I am no
gentleman."), and of course it ends on a wedding day, as Gilda decides
on
Max when she can't make up her mind. The second-best moment of the film
is
when George and Tom size up Max, going so far as to peer at
his
crotch, and
declare that of the three choices, Max is most decidedly "vegetable."
But because this is Ernst Lubitsch, when Gilda can't decide between
George and Gary, she
ultimately
chooses both–meaning that while it's sort of the precursor to Bull
Durham
, with a matronly/sexually-voracious woman tutoring
the opposite sex in their professions,
it's at the end more courageous than Bull Durham
because it allows the woman
to continue to be sexually predacious at the expense of two men
powerless
against her.

Design For Living
agrees: "Let's not be delicate," Tom pleas at one point. "Let's be
crude
and
objectionable." It's not daring for its time, it's daring in any
time, enough
so that movies its equal in terms of sexual frankness and sophistication
are
still exceedingly rare. A predictor of the screwball comedies that
would proliferate the '30s into the '40s, Design For Living
is indicated
by sharp, overlapping dialogue and long silent sequences where Lubitsch
builds
character through pantomime and brilliant timing. Take the opening
sequence on
a train, where Gilda draws the boys while they sleep and then the boys
steal her
sketchbook, flipping through it while she naps–only to find
caricatures
of
themselves, ridiculous and vulnerable, on the last page. The complexity
of this interaction, of the exchange of power through the passing back
and forth
of the
gaze and the woman's hijacking of it through her mocking of the
men–and
then
her literal laughter as she awakes–is dazzling. It's one of my
favourite
sequences from this period in film, second only to the clock/seduction
scene
from Trouble in Paradise. Take, too, the
professions of the men as
essentially feckless-artist types (asked in round numbers how much he
earns a
year, George replies, "In round numbers? Zero") finally capable of
success
under the tutelage and agency of a brilliant woman who remains
above domestication: elusive and dangerous. See in
Gilda's uncontrollable liberty the heroines in Hitchcock's late
masterpieces–and see Hitchcock as Lenny, squeezing his bunnies
(birds?) so
hard out of love that they break. Lubitsch doesn't squeeze them at all,
and so
Gilda ends her time with us
as singular and powerful as she began. Shut up and deal, indeed.

Design2

THE
BLU-RAY DISC

Criterion delivers Design for Living to
Blu-ray in a beautiful 1.33:1, 1080p presentation sourced,
according to the liner notes, from a "35mm fine-grain master positive."
Meaning the transfer is a generation away from a negative, though
Criterion has performed its usual digital magic and the image, beneath
an impenetrable coat of age, is
sharp and contrasty. The attendant LPCM 1.0 audio is
more
than adequate–everything is
clear, even as the dialogue collides, and the small amount of hiss is
preferable to dead silence. A modest portion of supplementary
material begins with The Clerk (3 mins., HD), a
segment from the 1932 omnibus film If
I Had a Million
directed by Lubitsch and starring Charles
Laughton that offers a nice punchline, if little else.
"Selected Scene
Commentary" (36 mins.), by the abovementioned Prof. William Paul
(author
of
Ernst Lubitsch's
American Comedy
), is a track that starts off feeling
scripted
and awkward, but quickly reveals itself as invaluable for Paul's
insights
into
Lubitsch and the back-and-forth he does comparing Design for Living
to
Trouble
in Paradise
.

"Joseph McBride: The
Screenplay" (23 mins., HD) is an interview with McBride wherein he
compares
Hecht's script to the Coward play, though he doesn't mention that
Samson
Raphaelson, Lubitsch's collaborator on Trouble in Paradise,
declined to
participate this time around because he saw no reason to try to adapt
Coward and, besides, felt like Lubitsch should move on from
what he
though was
an essentially "silly" genre. "Play of the Week: A Choice of
Coward" (74 mins., HD) is a BBC production of the play. It's a tough
watch;
Lubitsch was right when he calculated that Coward wouldn't connect with
American audiences. The delightful Kim Morgan writes the booklet essay
for the disc. Most associated in my mind with the study and celebration
of film
noir
, she focuses in on the sexuality and gender
politics of the movie in question. 
It's
good stuff.

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