Tonight's movie was "Design For Living" (1933), a highly entertaining pre-Code relationship comedy directed by the legendary Ernst Lubitsch, whose equally sophisticated "Trouble In Paradise" we saw a while back. Lubitsch' style is similar to classic screwball comedy, but without the rapid fire repartee. He also had a look to his pictures that was very elegant, with the blacks and whites (and grey scale) of his Art Deco interiors all perfectly saturated, and every person and object in the frame lined up and squared away. I mentioned before that his visuals flow like liquid and this was evident again tonight.
Gary Cooper and Frederic March are two Americans in France, taking a train to Paris. They are half asleep when Miriam Hopkins walks into their compartment and sits across from them. She is a sketch artist for an advertising agency, and also a saucy free spirit, as we see that many of the female protagonists are in these pre-Code movies. Hopkins was tailor made for such a role, and no sooner does she sit down here in the train compartment, then she starts to draw a caricature of the two sleeping men, who just so happen to be very handsome. She, of course, is pretty and vivacious.
Cooper and March awaken and are startled to see a woman in their room. This is followed by their being briefly incensed, for about ten seconds, at the goofy drawing she has made of them, which is in turn followed by each man attempting to outdo the other in their introductions to her. This is stylised comedy from the opening lines, every sentence and every gesture has been timed and worked out.
Both men are artists themselves, not in the commercial sense like Hopkins, but as "true to self" Bohemians. March is an aspiring playwright. Cooper is a painter. Neither has a dime to his name, but both are smitten with Miriam from the start and seek to woo her in a not unfriendly competition of one-upsmanship. She's got the goods on these guys because she is a Bohemian at heart herself. She is also carrying the sex appeal. She sees their desire and calls a truce, as the trio arrive in Paris and settle into their lives and apartments.
Hopkins professes a "fondness" for both March and Cooper. They hate this wimpy term (because she exudes quite a bit more feeling for each), but she is not one for settling down. So the truce is to be a platonic relationship between the three, with Hopkins obviously holding the reins. The men are aware of her power over them and conspire to reject her........but neither can go through with it.
Meanwhile, there is a Third Rail (or is it a Fifth Wheel?) in the relationship. Miriam Hopkins has a boss at her agency, played by Edward Everett Horton of "Fractured Flickers" fame, who is a no-sex-appeal fussbudget, and also has a crush on her. He is loaded with money, and aspires to make more, and he tells the two artistic "hooligans", as he calls them, that there is something to be said for what he can provide to the lady, namely security. He is the proverbial millionaire seeking a trophy wife.
At first, his attempts to shoo the two suitors away come to nothing. First she falls in love with Gary Cooper, and the platonic pact is broken, in a very suggestive yet discrete pre-Code way. Feeling guilty, Hopkins uses her society connections to promote the neglected March's latest play, which he has been working on since the start of the movie.
Through her promotion, his play is sold to a major promoter, and it takes off.
The next we see of them, she has married the penniless painter Cooper; March has become a major light in the world of theater, highly successful, and the Fifth Wheel (Horton), still looms in the background.
Hopkins is like a Muse of sorts. Whomever she turns her favor toward will have success in their chosen endeavor. They only fall when they try to possess her, and again here in the pre-Code era we have a portrayal, 80 years in advance, of the model of the Modern Independent Woman.
The man is always depicted as being dependent, romantically speaking, in these movies.
In real life, it is probably about equal.
The best is when no one is made to feel dependent when a couple is on equal terms emotionally.
But this is a Lubitsch comedy from the 1930s, when women were first coming into their own, culturally.
In real life, women have always run the show in their own way. It's a delicate balance between the sexes.
There are many relationship changes in "Design For Living". It's almost like a game of Musical Chairs, and you know that eventually every man is going to feel himself excluded (and then included).
Hopkins is in no way a tramp. In fact, she elaborates on how it seems to be okay for men to audition any number of women for marriage, but the same doesn't seem to be true for women.
There is a lot of sexual commentary going on here - advanced for it's time - and as the movie was made from a Noel Coward play, I can see why he was considered such a wit in his day, on the level of Oscar Wilde.
As played by the talented cast, "Design For Living" is subtle but pushing the sexual boundaries for the time, but most of all it is very funny and stylish in the way of the classic studio films of the 1930s.
I have only seen two or three of Ernst Lubitsch's films, but each one has been excellent and worthy of Two Very Big Thumbs Up, as is this one.
It took a high level of talent on every level - from the writers to the set designers to the carpenters to the camera men, to the lighting crew, to the director and actors.....really the whole studio, to make these movies as great as they were in the Golden Era. You have to see them to appreciate them, and I recommend that you do. They were the cream of the crop back then.
I am gonna get some sleep now as we have church in the morning.
I will see you there. Love all night long in the meantime. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
No comments:
Post a Comment