Seena Owen is tired of the small-town life. Boyfriend Matt Moore may think she looks good in a calico dress, but she thinks she has a crepe-de-chine soul. So she takes the train to New York. Five years later, she is the kept woman of J. Barney Sherry, who refuses to buy her that $22,000 mink stole; he's just bought her a Rolls-Royce. How about a vacation to that resort instead? It turns out to be next to the small town where Moore is still living. She rejects him again, kindly.
The next time she encounters Moore is when he's just back from serving in the Great War. He's blind, and Gas has gotten into his lungs, and the doctors say he'll be dead in three weeks. So...
It's from a Fanny Hurst novel, and it's directed by Frank Borzage. How you like this movie depends on what camp you consider yourself part of. I consider myself in the Frank Borzage camp. I'm just not in the Fanny Hurst camp. Borzage was not the Great Director at this time. He was a good studio director, always ready to take on a western or weeper, comedy or cliff-hanger. I honestly don't believe he began to find his voice until LAZYBONE (1925), and SEVENTH HEAVEN was a breakout film for him as well as Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell. So when he was assigned to this movie, it was a great opportunity to head into Demille territory, the story of a woman leading the high life, who finds salvation in the cross.
However, unlike Demille, Borzage doesn't show us the alluring spectacle of the high life; wild partying is limited to a couple of short scenes. J. Barney Sherry is a kind man, with a practical soul, who enjoys indulging Miss Owen -- within his ample but not infinite budget; and the cross she finds her salvation in is not the one Jesus died on, but the one on the Distinguished Service Medal that Matt Moore died for. That's very typical for Borzage: always little people.
However, this is more a Fanny Hurst movie than a Borzage one, and Seena Owen was a vamp star. So when she's miserable in a Fanny Hurst Misery Subplot (patent pending), she's going to be absolutely miserable for a long time. And I'm going to be bored while she is. In this case, it's a couple of months and ten minutes of screentime before she reforms. Goodness! Satan's snares must be easy to wiggle out of!
The sort of mystical power of love that shows up in Borzage's best and most typical works is not really in operation here.... or if it is, it lacks all sense of mysticism, and is more akin to Freudian dream analysis. In the end this is a good studio hybrid work. Borzage was still struggling to find his auctorial voice and the freedom to use it.
