Reaching for the Moon (1930)

Douglas Fairbanks as Larry Day in Reaching for the Moon

"The microphone is ruthlessly unkind to [Fairbanks]," wrote a New York Times critic in 1934, "Neither in voice nor theatrical skill is he gifted to read lines." Unfortunately, writer/director Edmund Goulding also didn't do him any favors, as this second Fairbanks talkie, Reaching for the Moon, thoroughly demonstrates. (Fairbanks himself wrote his next film, Mr. Robinson Crusoe. Sadly, it is even worse). On top of this, DVD distribution companies like his voice even less; the production quality of the Passport Video release of this film makes it all but unwatchable. Having sat through a 74 minute mess of blurry, jumpy picture and and audio that sounds like it was recorded in a railway tunnel, I find that while Fairbanks does nothing to save this shoddy script, neither do Bing Crosby or Bebe Daniels. The only truly memorable performance is given by Edward Everett Horton, a year or two before he found his true calling as Fred Astaire's perennial valet at RKO. I've heard a rumor that the art deco sets used for this film are magnificent, but I wouldn't know, as I've never seen them. Yes, the DVD is that bad.

Design for Living (1933)

Gary Cooper and Miriam Hopkins

With the list of names on board for Design for Living, it had better be incredible, and thankfully it does not disappoint. Ernst Lubitsch directs a Noel Coward play, starring Gary Cooper, Miriam Hopkins, Frederic March, and Edward Evertt Horton, and every one of them has got their game face on, and how. The dialog sparkles with impossible wit. Nobody speaks like this, but we don't watch movies to see real life; we have real life for that. As is often the case with Lubitsch's films, Design is interested in how human beings, with their own agendas for their sex lives, fit into a society, which frequently imposes on them a radically different agenda. Design approaches this question in the context of the clash of the worlds of advertising and art, of the difference between the things that really matter to people, and the things that someone has a vested interest in making them think matter.