A minor Lubitsch fluff transposes Noël Coward’s eponymous play onto the celluloid (but in only bare-bones terms), DESIGN FOR LIVING is a witty but stuffy comedy hammers out an uncharacteristic denouement for a risquéthree-way relationship between two men and a woman, a progenitor of François Truffaut’s JULES AND JIM (1962).

Three Americans in Paris, best friends and roomies, struggling artists Tom Chambers (March) and George Curtis (Cooper) both are swept off their feet by a chic girl Gilda Farrell (Hopkins), who reciprocates them with isometric amount of affection, before soon a platonic ménage-à-trois under the same roof is propounded and accepted with a tripartite agreement, only sabotaged when one party is away in London for his burgeoning playwright career, the remaining two becomes an item, occasioning a crack in two men's friendship, and a seesawing Gilda has only one exit route when she is again, impelled to make the impossible choosing, leaving both and hurriedly marries to her long-time admirer Max Plunkett (Horton, utterly jolly in his priggish, business-oriented persona), which turns out to be an exasperating mistake on her part.

It is a jocose folie-à-trois panning out like a heady and mellifluous minuet, predominantly confined itself within interior spaces, aptly conceals its hanky-panky business off the screen (released within a whisker of the advent of the notorious Hays Code), but revels in its proto-screwball faux-naïf characterization to the hilt. The trio leads are all up for it, although acting side by side, a debonair March fairly eclipses an impetuous Cooper in his sonorous diction and unperturbed demeanor, but the cynosure here is a ripsnorting Hopkins, exerts her high-wire balancing act between two emblems of idealized American masculinity and only comically falls prey of her own indecision in the slapdash third act, as a matter of fact, Lubitsch cunningly expurgates all the frills and trimmings from his camera (including a climactic brawl, vanishingly completed in a trice), less is more, this blithe rom-com once again bears witness to Lubitsh’s master-class aptitude of economic elegance under the Studio system.

companion pieces: Lubitsch’s ONE HOUR WITH YOU (1932, 7.1/10), HEAVEN CAN WAIT (1943, 7.9/10).

《爱情无计》，恩斯特・刘别谦拍于1933年的有声片。

八十年前，刘大师就创作出了之后特吕弗拍摄的《祖与占》中的两性游戏规则，但这完全是两种不同风格的样式，说是三角恋亦可，说是四角恋亦然。也许五十年代的特吕弗受过其影响。

因为《爱情无计》就拍于五光十色的巴黎。两个美国佬在巴黎共享一间房子，剧作家与画家整天疲于奔命，日子过得狼狈不堪。一次火车上与漂亮顽皮女子的相遇，彻底改变了他俩的人生轨迹。烂泥糊上了墙头，剧作家伦敦火爆，画家在法国名声鹊起，好运纷至沓来。

而好女子只有一个，且她的“监护人”还时常过度关照。“君子协定”只是理性时候的产物。冲动是魔鬼，感情一来，什么都抛在九霄云外。风水轮流转，先是画家，后是剧作家，再是“监护人”，可谓你方唱罢我登场，但好戏终有收场之时，妙不可言就在结束之期，三人又开始了尽兴的美好人生，实在是余味不尽。

这是刘大师改编自英国剧作家诺埃尔·考沃德的同名舞台剧，王尔德式的敏锐和尖酸，经过崭新的过滤，既保留了对上流社会悠闲阶级的洞悉，又增添了都会男女的触觉。真正的都市情感猛片，永远也不会过时，尽管她已八十岁。加里·库柏与弗雷德里克・马奇演到了极致。

2012、9、4