Let’s Get Criterion Presents: Design For Living (1933, Ernst Lubitsch)

So this where Putting On The Ritz got the line about Gary Cooper, who in this film is not a stoic hero but is instead a lovable cad involved in a three way affair with Fredric March and Miriam Hopkins. She becomes their muse and also the source of trouble between the two of them in a delightful comedy of manners that is elegant and about going from struggling artist to successful upper class. However as they say you can take the troublemakers out of of trouble, yet you can’t take the trouble out of the troublemakers. Something like that, I guess.

Ernst Lubitsch created a modern sensibility in the 1930s and Wes Anderson basically copied his shtick. This is my kind of romantic comedy movie, and while it is largely fluff the trio of Cooper, March and Hopkins plus the snappy one liners elevates some of the more thin material. I will most likely see Design for Living again later, perhaps on a gloomy day when I need a fine pick me up. The Blu-ray looks fantastic and as I may have noted before it’s the really old films that benefit the most from these restorations.