Tom, a playwright, and George, a painter, are two young American artists living together in Paris. While traveling, the two meet Gilda, a free-spirited young woman, with each man instantly falling in love. Unfortunately, Gilda struggles mightly choosing between the two men, admiring them both for different reasons, which leads to a 'gentleman's agreement" between the three of them. The Plan? Gilda will move in with them as a friend and critic of their artistic work, but neither man, neither George nor Tom, will ever be physically intimate with Gilda. While the aggreement works at first, when Tom gets his big break on a production in London, he leaves Gilda and George along in Paris, putting the whole agreement on thin ice. Design for Living very much feels like a Lubitsch film, featuring the elegant dialogue that is superbly written but never overwrought. Coming from the pre-code era, Design For Living is a pretty racy film for its time, given that when Gilda first meets the two young men, she is intimate with both of them, dating them on back to back occasions, wishing to sample the product before making and rash decisions. Lubitsch's films ooze elegance, delivering impressive characterizations that really express the passion, desires, and fears of these three individuals. Design For Living may try to tone down its source material homosexual undertones, it's interesting how intentional or not, one could argue that Gilda's character is a symbolic representation of the relationship Tom and George share -friends' only when there is obviously both a mental and physical connection. Ernst Lubitsch's Design For Living is not one of my favorite films from the filmmaker, though it maintains the elegance and humanistic qualities that make Lubitsch great.
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AuthorLove of all things cinema brought me here. Archives
June 2023
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