Gary Cooper (High Noon), Fredric March (The Best Years of Our Lives), and Miriam Hopkins (Trouble in Paradise) play a trio of Americans in Paris who enter into a very adult "gentleman's" agreement, in this continental pre-Code comedy freely adapted by Ben Hecht (Notorious) from a play by Noël Coward (Brief Encounter), and directed by Ernst Lubitsch (Trouble in Paradise). A risqué relationship comedy and a witty take on creative pursuits, it concerns a commercial artist (Hopkins) unable-or unwilling-to choose between the equally dashing painter (Cooper) and playwright (March) she meets on a train en route to the City of Light. Design for Living is Lubitsch at his most adroit, an entertainment at once debonair and racy, featuring three stars at the height of their allure.
Supplements
"The Clerk," starring Charles Laughton-director Ernst Lubitsch's segment of the 1932 film If I Had a Million, which he made just before Design for Living
Selected-scene commentary by film professor William Paul
Play of the Week: A Choice of Coward, a 1964 British television production of the play Design for Living, introduced on camera by playwright Noël Coward
New interview with film scholar and screenwriter Joseph McBride on Lubitsch and Ben Hecht's screen adaptation of the Coward play
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