Like many others, I could never really stand romantic comedies. This film, while belonging to that genre, was still ok by my standards since it's from the pre Code era; a brief but golden time when old movies were more controversial than a lot of people think. Directed by Ernst Lubitsch, who also made 3 other movies I've seen (Trouble in Paradise, The Smiling Lieutenant, and Ninotchka), Design for Living concerns itself with a woman who is too attractive for her own good, and how two friends have to come to a compromise in order to make sure their friendship stays intact. The story begins on a train to Paris, and a girl named Gilda Farrell (Miriam Hopkins) enters a train car occupied by Thomas and George (Fredric March and Gary Cooper respectively). While George is a playwright and has Tom as his roommate in Paris, Gilda works for an artist named Max Plunkett (Edward Everett Horton), for whom she has no affection. Tom and George have a mutual understanding that both of them want to be with Gilda, but they think it's best to forget about her before they get too emotionally invested. When Gilda comes to see them, she can't choose one man to be with, so she agrees to be both of their friends instead but refuses to sleep with either one. Some time later, Gilda gets Tom to leave France and go to Britain so that he can get his play produced. While he's gone, George sees an opportunity to be with Gilda, and she makes no attempts to stop his advances. Max later visits the theater where Tom is and tells him what a bigshot George is now, so he goes back to france, only to find George and Gilda now share a penthouse. However, George is currently away painting something, so Tom tries to get back at him by staying with Gilda. When George returns, he knocks expensive plates off a table and tells both of them to get out. Gilda says she pities him. Having had enough of being caught in between these two brutes, Gilda makes herself off limits to them both by marrying Plunkett. When he takes her to his mansion, she is saddened when she notices a gift plant from China, courtesy of George and Tom. Plunkett then hosts a party for his clients, and Gilda discovers Tom and George are in her bedroom somehow, and managed to sneak into the mansion by impersonating cops. When Max walks in, he finds all 3 of them laughing as they sit on the bed. Max tells them to get out, but upon going downstairs, finds all his guests have vanished. Gilda leaves Plunkett, and gets into a car with Tom and George, saying she wants to go back to living with them the way she did before. Based on a play of the same name, the screenplay for this movie was done by Ben Hecht, who has dozens of quality ones to his name. I found the movie to be ok, even though it might seem to be much longer than just an hour and a half, due to the non-inclusion of a soundtrack. March and Hopkins were at the top of their games when this was made, and like most films I've seen with the latter, I regard her as being the best thing about it. The plot might not be that original since there's only so many different ways you can tell a love story and the phone conversation at the end was kind of getting on my nerves, so overall, this film could have gone better if Lubitsch had chosen someone else to do the screenplay. It isn't a bad movie, but it's not the movie it could have been.
Review of Design for Living
