sunset gun

Three Make a Match: Design for Living

Today is Fredric March's birthday. To celebrate, I'm reposting an excerpt from my 2011 Criterion essay on one of his best pictures, Ernst Lubitsch's sublime, soulful and very, very sexy Pre-Code masterpiece, Design For Living.

Ernst Lubitsch’s Design for Living (1933) is what sexy should be—delightful, romantic, agonizing ecstasy. And it’s not just sexy but also revolutionary, daring, sweet, sour, cynical, carefree, poignant, and so far ahead of its time that one could cite it as not only a pre-Code masterpiece but also a prefeminist testimonial. A uniquely Lubitschian picture in its elegance and graceful wisdom, with the gruffly intelligent, street-smart Hollywood writer and soon-to-be legend Ben Hecht collaborating, this take on the trials, titillations, and torments of a kind of relationship usually seen in true adult films, a ménage à trois (and one involving the gorgeous trio of Fredric March, Gary Cooper, and Miriam Hopkins), is unlike any other movie of its era.

What film, even before that killjoy schoolmarm Joseph Breen brought his Squaresville strictness to the Production Code in 1934, has ever presented the potentially salacious scenario of three-way love in such a wistfully complicated way? This is neither a bunch of hot-to-trot cheap thrills nor a moralizing sermon on the dangers of sexual transgression—it’s a soulful look at human desire.

Design for Living recognized that desire is not divided unequally between the sexes. It can, in fact, be genderless. A place where gentlemen can be women. And women can be wolves. And men can be romantic Red Riding Hoods, wandering through a quixotic forest only to stumble across a beautiful blonde with shimmering white teeth, delicate little feet, and a big, beguiling wit. “The better to share you with,” she will eventually declare, before not eating them whole but tasting their specific Coop and March delicacies with equal ardency. Here, however, is where the movie reveals clearly that men are indeed men. Male horniness is not to be trifled with. Best friends or no best friends, how can they resist? This is some woman. They surrender, dear.

And that surrender happens from the get-go, perfectly, in a favorite movie location for scintillating erotic interplay: a train. With a wonderfully wordless introduction, the movie—adapted quite loosely from Noël Coward’s notorious play—begins like a declaration: This is a movie. To those expecting two lumps of Coward in their Lubitsch, well, sorry; you’re getting a pinch (and thrown over the shoulder for good luck). This is not a play. This is a motion picture. Faces are the thing, faces writ large, gorgeous faces as directed by the sparklingly urbane Lubitsch.

Please read the rest of my essay at Criterion. And, don't be a gentleman, if you've not seen it, watch the movie. March? Cooper? Hopkins? Lubitsch? Hecht? You can't go wrong. Well, you, or rather they (the characters) can go wrong, but in all the right, sexy, elegant ways... And that's not exactly wrong. Viva unconventional love!

BBC: 21st Century's 25 Greatest Films

 

The BBC asked me to contribute my top ten list of the 21st Century's greatest films. It wasn't easy. These lists never are. But lists aren't definitive, obviously -- they work best to stir up discussion and debate. And internal debate as well (I wanted a few ties. One more Paul Thomas Anderson, one more Lars von Trier, one for Quentin Tarantino and the glorious Kill Bill).

If you know me, you know what my number one choice was. If you know me ever better you know what my number two choice was. My number two added up to the number one among all 177 world critics polled (read all of the individual lists here). And I wrote about that picture here, among the 25 of the best chosen (OK, it was David Lynch's Mulholland Dr.)

Here's my list -- for now:

 

1. Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2014)

 

 

2. Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch, 2001)

 

 

3. Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011) [Tie: Antichrist, 2009]

 

 

4. There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007) [Tie: The Master, 2012]

 

 

5. Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2013)

 

 

6. Fat Girl (Catherine Breillat, 2001)

 

 

7. A Serious Man (Joel and Ethan Coen, 2009)

 

 

8. Battle Royale (Kinji Fukasaku, 2000) [Tie: Kill Bill: Vol 1, 2003]

 

 

9. The Turin Horse (Bela Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky, 2011)

 

 

10. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (Werner Herzog, 2009)

 

 

And...here's my BBC writeup of the number one movie,  Mulholland Dr:

 

WH Auden called Los Angeles “the great wrong place”. James Ellroy called it “the great right place”. The idea that two, or more, seemingly conflicting ideas can simultaneously be true is so often forgotten in the zero-sum culture of today, but it’s at the heart of David Lynch’s empathetic masterpiece. Mulholland Drive came to us haunted. It was a rejected TV pilot, reportedly turned down because of its confusing narrative, actresses ludicrously deemed too old, disturbing images and Old Hollywood star Ann Miller sucking on a cigarette. By design, Lynch was already echoing the Hollywood dream machine and the idea that movies reflect our own dreams – perhaps knowing all along this fever dream could only flower on the big screen. Mulholland Drive is a reverie of sex, suicide and “silencio”. It’s also America, the beautiful and the bizarre, its romanticism, dysfunction, cruelty and absurdity. We love movies. The world loves movies. But America’s often freakish, surreal desperation towards ‘glamour’ when upturned can be as ugly and as horrifying as a nightmare – and the nightmare set at Winkie’s Diner in Mulholland Drive is one of the most terrifying moments put on film. Lynch’s film is so gorgeous and so painful, so mysterious and, in many ways, so recognizable – drive on the actual road, Mulholland, at night, and then walk from Western to Vermont, and you’ll see – that, whatever theory you ascribe to it, the picture does indeed reflect a reality that moves beyond southern California and parks itself in our brains, tapping into our dreams, deepest fears, inscrutable natures, erotic desires, pool boys and dumped paint on jewelry...

 

Read it all here at the BBC: