DESIGN FOR LIVING

This 1932 film is an adaptation of a Noël Coward play directed by Ernst Lubitsch.  If the combination of Coward and Lubitsch suggests a concoction that might be a little too arch for its own good, one can rest easy because it seems that screenwriter Ben Hecht coarsened the play almost beyond recognition.

And if that wasn’t enough the unlikely duo of Gary Cooper and Frederic March play the two male leads, rather than Lubitsch’s initial choice of Ronald Colman and Leslie Howard.

Cooper and March are a struggling painter and writer respectively, eking out an existence in Paris. When they meet Gilda (played by the wonderful Miriam Hopkins) they both fall for her. She for her part seems equally attracted to both, creating a Jules-et-Jim-type love triangle.

Rather shockingly, one imagines for cinema-going audiences at the time, they agree to live together, but as Gilda states explicitly, with “no sex”.

This film was made just before the Hays Code came into effect, so that it would be several decades before mainstream audiences would again be exposed to such dangerous notions. 

Not that the idea of a ménage à trois is treated very seriously in what is after all a comedy. 

But it has to be said that it a rather leaden comedy despite the best efforts of Hopkins and Lubitsch. Besides the miscasting of the two main leads there's no denying that the story runs out of steam in the third act. 

Nevertheless it's worth a watch as an example of the sort of film that couldn't be made for several decades, and for Miriam Hopkins' performance.