300 - Design for Living, United States, 1933. Dir. Ernst Lubitsch.

Friday, October 27, 2017

300 - Design for Living, United States, 1933.  Dir. Ernst Lubitsch.

Welcome to Bohemia.

This is no ordinary love triangle.

It is an out-in-the-open three-way relationship between a woman and two men.

All three Americans.  Living in France.

And it all begins on a train, as the men are sleeping and the woman enters the car, gazes upon them, and begins to draw their portraits.  While smiling.

She is a commercial artist, a work for hire, named Gilda (pronounced "Jilda"), and she is infectiously good-natured.  She seems to love life, love what she does, love people, and really love these two men, even while they are sleeping.

The two men are Tom and George.  Thomas B. Chambers and George Curtis.  Two starving-artist roommates, the one a playwright, the other a painter.

When they awaken, she is asleep, so they help themselves to look through her portfolio.  With each turned page they see Napoleon in a lesser degree of dress (He is her caricature for underwear ads), which ends not with what they expect but with the portrait of themselves.

They look up.  She is awake and smiling at them.  They speak French to her, or try to, and she tries back, each party thinking the other is French, until finally she declares, "Oh, nuts!" and they realize that she too is an ex-pat.  After standing to attention and humming the "Star-Spangled Banner," they speak to her with relief in American English.

And each takes a turn trying to woo her without the other one's knowing it.

Another man enters to block both of them.  Max Plunkett.  He is neither Miss Farrell's husband nor her fiance.  He is her devoted friend, guide, counselor, and protector.  Or as Chambers puts it, "In other words, Mr. Plunkett, you never got to first base."

Plunkett accidentally agrees with him before stopping to overlook the insult.

Chambers will use Plunkett's words in the play he is writing, Good Night Bassington, whose plot oddly begins to resemble what is currently happening to them.

Gilda (remember, "Jilda") spends a day with Chambers and a day with Curtis, and Plunkett fails to talk any of the three of them out of it.

In fact, Gilda herself comes to their apartment and lays it all out in the open.  She has had the same thing happen to her that happens to men.  Men are allowed to love more than one woman at a time.  She loves two men.  She intends to follow through with both of them.

She proposes to stay with them and be platonic.  She calls it a "gentleman's agreement."  The three of them will be roommates, and she will oversee their artistic development.  She will be tough on them and demand that they improve.  She does.  They do.

But one might imagine this relational arrangement hangs in a delicate balance difficult to sustain.

Gilda gets Chambers his first produced opening in London.  He will become a hit and he will have to move there.  While he is away, Curtis and Gilda are left to consummate their side of the love triangle.

But he too will become successful and he will be gone when Chambers comes back to visit.

What is a woman to do?

Gilda will figure it out.  And it might not be what one expects.

Design for Living was based on a recent Noel Coward play of the same name.  He wrote it for the Lunts--Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne--and himself.  They had met just over a decade earlier when they were all broke, and he promised them that one day he would write a play in which they could act together.  Now they were all stars.  He wrote it.  They starred in it.  It was a success.

Meanwhile, Ernst Lubitsch, known for his unconventional libidinal comedies, chose to adapt this play from a famous playwright rather than his usual choice of an obscure one.  He was not able to get his usual screen collaborator, so he teamed up with Ben Hecht, now known as one of the most prolific and successful screenwriters in history.  (Look him up.)  Hecht kept almost none of Coward's original dialogue, but he himself was a great writer and his choices may have improved the story in its transition from stage to screen.

The movie stars the tall Gary Cooper (6'3") as George Curtis, the average-height Fredric March (5'10") (then more famous) as Thomas B. Chambers, and the short Miriam Hopkins (5'2") as Gilda Farrell, and their height differences occasionally play into sight gags.

The film is playful throughout, with hopeful wit and joy of life.  As for its plausibility, we will let you decide whether you are willing to suspend your disbelief.

Gilda makes a gentleman's agreement.

But then, as she reminds us, she is not a gentleman.


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Welcome to Bohemia, Sir.

Oh, now, don't let's be delicate, Mr. Plunkett.  Let's be crude and objectionable, both of us.  One of the greatest handicaps to civilization, and I may say to progress, is the fact that people speak with ribbons on their tongues.

Delicacy, as the philosophers point out, is the banana peel under the feet of truth.

Immorality may be fun, but it isn't fun enough to take the place of 100% virtue and three square meals a day.

Mr. Curtis, what is your annual income, in round figures?
In round figures?  Zero.
May I ask what you live on?
Nothing.  I survive by miracles.

Yesterday it's Tom?  Yes.
Today it's George?  Yes.

Hoodlums.  Artistic bums.  Both of 'em put together aren't worth a dime.

You've been nice.
I've been marvelous.
No, just nice.

Gilda, I've been your friend for five years.
And I want you to remain my friend for the next 50 years, so please shut up.

Max, have you ever been in love?
This is no time to answer that!

Have you ever felt your brain catch fire, and a curious, dreadful thing go right through your body, down, down to your very toes, and leave you with your ears ringing?
That's abnormal.

I haven't got a clean shirt to my name.
Clean shirt?  What's up, a romance?
I'm not talking about pajamas.  I'm talking about a clean shirt.
I don't want to go around looking like a rag picker.

So he caught you with Gilda.
It's a lie!  He didn't catch me.

Let's behave like civilized people.
It's quite apparent that you behaved in this matter as a rather common, ordinary rat.

I've been listening to these half-witted dramas of yours for 11 years.
And I've grown cockeyed looking at those Humpty-Dumpty pictures of yours.
And we should give up all this on account of some girl we met on a train?
Third class!
No woman's worth it.
We ignore her 50-50.

A thing happened to me that usually happens to men.  You see, a man can meet two, three, or even four women and fall in love with all of them and then by a process of interesting elimination he's able to decide which one he prefers.

But a woman must decide purely on instinct, guesswork, if she wants to be considered nice.  Oh, it's quite all right for her to try on a hundred hats before she picks one out, but--

Which chapeau do you want, Madam?
Both.

Well, boys, it's the only thing we can do.  Let's forget sex.

I think both you boys have a great deal of talent, but too much ego.  You spend one day working and a whole month bragging.

Gentlemen, there are going to be a few changes.  I'm going to jump up and down on your ego.  I'm going to criticize your work with a baseball bat.  I'm going to tell you every day how bad your stuff is until you get something good, and if it's good, I'm going to tell you it's rotten till you get something better.

I'm going to be a Mother of the Arts.

No sex.

It's a gentleman's agreement.

You should know, my dear, that I hate stupidity masquerading as criticism.

You're ruining me.  You're ruining my work.  You're just being cheap and malicious.

Why don't you go out to a movie or something.  Tarzan is playing at the Adelphia Theatre.

You can't change love by shaking hands with somebody.

We're unreal, the three of us, trying to play jokes on nature.

This is real.  [He kisses her.]  A million times more honest than all the art in the wold.

It's true we have a gentleman's agreement, but unfortunately I am no gentleman. - Gilda

Well, pals, you'll be interested to know that all London is agog with my wit and charm.

The three of us--Athos, Porthos, and Mademoiselle d'Artagnon.

Good Night Bassington now in its 10th month.

Hello, you old vampire, you!
You hooligan!
You Benedict Arnold!
You--shall we be seated?

Conscience bothering you?
No.
Confused?
Very much so.

Well, that's one way of meeting the situation.  Shipping clerk comes home, finds missus with boarder.  He breaks dishes.  It's pure burlesque.

Then there's another way.  Intelligent artist returns unexpectedly, finds treacherous friends.  Both discuss the pros and cons of the situation in grown-up dialogue.  High-class comedy, enjoyed by everybody.

And there's a third way.  I'll kick your teeth out, tear your head off, and beat some decency into you!
Cheap melodrama.  Very dull.

Don't ever bow to double chins.  Stay an artist.  That's important.  In fact, the most important thing.

Here, you rattlesnake.

Two slightly used artists in the ashcan.

Do you love me?
People should never ask that question on their wedding night.  It's either too late or too early.

All the way from China.  Hello.  Tom and George.

This is no time for remembering.  It would have been much more tactful of them to forget.

Are you expected?
No, not exactly expected. / Anticipated, hoped for, and dreamed about.

Inspector Knox.  Sergeant O'Toole.  Headquarters.

Now, listen, Plunkett, Incorporated!  You go down to those customers of yours and give them a sales talk.  Sell them anything you want but not me.  I'm fed up with underwear, cement, linoleum!

I'm sick of being a trademark married to a slogan!

I guarantee you, you'll be considered the biggest martyr in the history of cement.

The number of sacred cows gaily demolished by the film--premarital virginity, fidelity, monogamy, marriage, and finally, the one article of even bohemian faith, the exclusive one-to-one love relationship--is staggering. - Molly Haskell.