When film critic Lou Lumenick introduced Ernst Lubitsch’s adaptation of Design For Living (scripted by Ben Hecht) at the TCM Classic Film Festival, he mentioned that the film was so sexually charged and racy for its contemporary audience that once the Hays Code was enforced in earnest in 1934, it was refused a re-release and went unseen for decades. It’s quite a feat, considering the most explicit dialogue in the film is when the word “sex” comes up a handful of times, and the closest thing to nudity is a caricature sketch of Napoleon in long underpants.

It’s funny how in some ways the fences really haven’t moved that much since those days: not in terms of depiction, where there’s certainly far more latitude in what you can show and say, but in terms of concept, in what you can address and explore. With a slate of recent studio releases that seem shocked and skeptical at the alien concept that a man and woman can have sex without being in love, it’s hard to believe that there was a Hollywood that looked at Design for Living — a comedy about a woman hooking up with one guy, and then another, and maybe both of them at the same time, and hey, maybe there’s something going on between the two guys, too — and the executives considered it a major tentpole release. Amazingly, the closest contemporary mainstream analogue these days might be the critically-reviled Twilight series, which I haven’t really explored, but with all those shots of the pale sparkling vampire and the shirtless Native American werewolf giving each other the eye, something’s happening — right?

What elevates Design for Living is the deft touch with which the director handles the material, a style that is so light and breezy and quasi-magical that critics actually call it “the Lubitsch touch.” The film is Y tu mamá también for the Depression-era Paris boho set, with down-and-out Americans George (Gary Cooper) and Tom (Fredric March) running into Gilda (Miriam Hopkins) on a train. George is an artist, Tom is a playwright, and they’re both unsuccessful. However, Gilda sees the talent behind that lack of success and becomes their agent, although she prefers to call it being “mother of the arts.” Of course, they’re both smitten with her and she’s smitten with the both of them, so they enter into an “unusual arrangement” that the film spends most of its time mining for laughs, jealous tension, and quirky relationship hijinx.

It’s a Noël Coward play (literally) with barely any of his dialogue, but that brand of wit is replaced with something equally satisfying. What makes the Lubitsch touch work is that it operates via cinematic prestidigitation. The thrust of each scene always dances around the point, with the characters never talking about what they’re really talking about yet doing it with such clarity that we hear the conversation they’re not having. And if that last sentence left you off-balance, that’s precisely the feeling that the Lubitsch pictures evoke, weaving physical humor and sight gags into the verbal jousting in a way that perpetually undercuts any hint of pretension.

That undercutting is crucial; making comedies about the romantic foibles of rich people during the Great Depression seems like a suicide mission, but Design for Living (and Trouble in Paradise, this film’s two-girls-and-a-guy inversion — both star Miriam Hopkins) populates its main cast with soft-hearted naïfs who, even after the windfall of success, feel like they’re merely playacting with all their wealth. The people who truly care about decorum and social class, like the schlubby Mr. Plunkett (Edward Everett Horton), who ensnares Gilda into a stultifying marriage — they’re all humorless buffoons. On the other hand, Tom and George and Gilda are effervescent, idealized avatars for the audience to project themselves onto — and in that way they capture one of the real joys of the cinema. The characters are free spirits, and watching the film, you swear they’re walking on air.

(The Film School Thesis Statement Generator says: “Through the juxtaposition of poverty and nature, Design for Living conforms to the pre-war crisis of masculinity.” Every single word in that statement is absolutely correct.)