Customer Reviews for
The Gary Cooper Collection (Design for Living / The Lives of a Bengal Lancer / Peter Ibbetson / The General Died at Dawn / Beau Geste)
Disappointing
So far I have seen 2 of the movies in this set: Design for Living and Peter Ibbetson and was disappointed in both. As a fan of High Noon, I was appalled by the shabby morality in these movies. This is not sexual sophistication but loose morals and no sense of real love for others. Real men and women love and stick with their spouses. My advice is to buy something else.The Gary Cooper Collection (Design for Living / The Lives of a Bengal Lancer / Peter Ibbetson / The General Died at Dawn / Beau Geste)
Fans of old movies...
This collection is a great value for the money. For fans of old movies, especially fans of Gary Cooper, I highly recommend it.The Gary Cooper Collection (Design for Living / The Lives of a Bengal Lancer / Peter Ibbetson / The General Died at Dawn / Beau Geste)
beau geste
I have long been a fan of Gary Cooper and was delighted to find a copy of Beau Geste at Amazon.I have seen the film several times over the last forty years and never tire of William Wellman!s wonderful direction and his ability to extract the best out of the main players. The old 1938 film stands up very well when compared to the remakes that have been released in the fiftes and sixties. The big bonus here of course is that for a very modest outlay you pick up three other Gary Cooper films. However the other three films are not in the same class as Beau Geste.The Gary Cooper Collection (Design for Living / The Lives of a Bengal Lancer / Peter Ibbetson / The General Died at Dawn / Beau Geste)
Well worth it if only for Design for Living and Beau Geste
The Gary Cooper Collection is a mixed bag. It contains near perfect examples of sophisticated sexual comedy (Design for Living) and rousing adventure that combines nobility, sacrifice, villainy and action (Beau Geste). Trailing them is the high spirited but erratic Lives of a Bengal Lancer, which also features a fine performance by Franchot Tone. Then bringing up the rear are The General Died at Dawn and Peter Ibbetson. Cooper is not a good match for Design or Ibbetson, but he shines in Geste, Lancers and, despite the corny dialogue, General. The price is right even if you only want Design for Living, Beau Geste and Lives of a Bengal Lancer. As much as I like Beau Geste, Design for Living is the one that for me takes the prize. Since, unlike Geste, it now is almost forgotten, it's the one I'll talk about.
There's no doubt about what's going on in Design for Living, a delightful high comedy about a ménage a trois, written by Noel Coward as rewritten by Ben Hecht and directed by Max Lubitsch...and it's not hanky panky. No, it's just joyous, straightforward sex.
When two artists, the painter George Curtis (Gary Cooper) and the playwright Tom Chambers (Fredric March), encounter Gilda Farrell (Miriam Hopkins) on the train to Paris, their 11-year friendship is going to be intriguingly tested. Gilda (with a soft "g") captures them both, and she reciprocates but can't choose. And why should she? She moves in with them. There's only one solution, however, to the inevitable problem. "Boys," she tells them "it's the only thing we can do. Let's forget sex." And with that, of course, neither they nor we can.
Ben Hecht often bragged that only one line of Coward's survived in his screenplay. All I know is that Hecht's words are some of the finest and funniest, as well as the most amusingly realistic, you're likely to find in a high-gloss Hollywood comedy. The movie just barely got in under the wire before the Production Code began to enforce the prude's code of morality on America. Lubitsch and Hecht create a sophisticated world in which going to bed with someone you like is as natural as...well, going to bed with someone you like. There's no leering or innuendo in the movie, just a reliance on the sophistication of the audience. For instance, Gilda explains to Tom and George the differences between how men and women sort things out. "You see," she tells them, "a man can meet two, three or four women and fall in love with all of them, and then, by a process of interesting elimination, he is able to decide which he prefers. But a woman must decide purely on instinct, guesswork, if she wants to be considered nice." The point we're aware of with a smile is that Gilda not only is nice, but smart, and that she's already tested the waters with each of them.
We start the movie with a ménage a trois, but one which turns into a duet with George and then a duet with Tom. After some encounters with business versus art, we all come to our senses and enjoy the sight of Gilda, George and Tom reunited in New York with a plan in mind. "Now we'll have some fun," Gilda says happily. "Back to Paris!" I have a feeling that forgetting sex won't be part of the plan for long.
The frisson of a bi-sexual ménage a trois is substantially toned down by Lubitsch and Hecht. While it wasn't explicit in Coward's stage play, one would have to be deaf and blind not to get the subtext, especially with Coward and Alfred Lunt as the two male leads when the play opened. In the movie, however, this just becomes inconsequential speculation, especially with Gary Cooper and Fredric March in the roles. Cooper manages not to embarrass himself in this highly polished comedy of sex and style, but it's clear that what works in Cooper's favor are his looks, not his line delivery or body language. March and Hopkins, however, are completely at ease and are a joy to watch.
Hollywood wouldn't make movies this adult and amusing until the Fifties, and even then the level of sophistication and respect for the audience, in my opinion, never fully recovered. Every now and then it's possible to come across in pre-Code Hollywood films of such mature pleasure you hope others will like them, too. Says one character in Design for Living, "Immorality may be fun, but it isn't fun enough to take the place of 100 per cent virtue and three square meals a day." How wrong he was...and is.
Design for Living is one of the five films packed onto two discs from The Gary Cooper Collection. It looks fine, just as the others do.The Gary Cooper Collection (Design for Living / The Lives of a Bengal Lancer / Peter Ibbetson / The General Died at Dawn / Beau Geste)
Gary Cooper - Last of the true celluloid heroes.
If you are under seventy,it is unlikely that you can relate to the great stars of the Golden Age, which finished when TV arrived.After the trauma of WW2, cinemagoers were looking ( even more than usual) for escapism, and romance,looking to a bygone age.Stars like Cooper made us optimistic that things would improve.I saw my first Cooper movie aged 14 (Distant Drums, an indifferent western)and became a fan. I made sure I saw the next 16 he made. But now I am so glad to be living in the DVD age, where we can see our stars in their early roles. There is no point in comparisons;post-1960 movies made in the shadow of TV are different in every way from those of the Golden Age, and so are their audience, who are principally TV fans, rarely going to the cinema. We must consider ourselves lucky that pre-1950 films are being put on DVD, even if the quality is not always perfect.Stop the complaining and enjoy the fruits of the electronic age! I recently bought a Cooper five DVD pack released by MGM (including a marvellous silent Winning of Barbara Worth), and am ordering this boxed set also.(The General Died at Dawn was said to be Coop's own favourite performance, while his biographer rates Design for Living as his best role- no wonder when it was directed by Lubitsch and based on a play by Noel Coward. Bengal Lancer and Beau Geste are terrific fun, with future stars as supporting players,like Ray Milland and Franchot Tone. Peter Ibbetson is a curiosity, with Cooper acting beyond his range and looking odd with a mustache.) So if it's Cooper or Crawford, treat yourself to a slice of movie history with a boxed set. Edward Pertinez.The Gary Cooper Collection (Design for Living / The Lives of a Bengal Lancer / Peter Ibbetson / The General Died at Dawn / Beau Geste)
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