Design for Living (1933)

Director: Ernst Lubitsch
Date Watched: 3-15-2022
Where: At home on a Blu-ray I own
Rating: 7/10

In my late twenties I went through my screwball comedies phase, and I wonder if I would have enjoyed this one any more had I watched it at the time. I knew of it, but never came across it, so this was my first time seeing it.

Gary Cooper and Fredric March are both great, as always. Miriam Hopkins? Not so much. She comes off as something of, well, a dumb slut, for lack of a better term. For the time, even in pre-code Hollywood, it was a much more shocking character to see on screen than today, where she’d appear downright wholesome, but that isn’t quite what I don’t like about her. She just isn’t very interesting, so seeing Cooper and March, as well as Edward Everett, basically throw their lives away to follow her doesn’t make much sense. The film needs a stronger female lead to justify the behavior of the male characters.

The film itself is pretty fun, and has some moments that only exist in the pre-code era, or at least only existed until the modern anything-goes era. When Hopkins makes a “gentleman’s agreement” with March and Cooper that they’ll live together, but not have sex, she delivers probably the best line in the movie a short time later when she says, “I’m no gentleman,” before bedding Cooper. That seemed too racy even for the pre-code era, and it made for a great finale to a great scene.

Overall, this isn’t Preston Sturges, Frank Capra, or Howard Hawks, but Ernst Lubitsch can definitely hold his own in the realm of screwball comedies.

Design for Living 1933 Movie Poster

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