Sétimo Céu

Much has been made of Murnau, but I'm more impressed by Borzage.

Yes, the subject matter is more lowbrow, but it is also more fully integrated into the cinematic flow, perhaps as a result.

I'm told this is his best in terms of what impresses me: the integration of space.

Nearly every shot is framed, not in two dimensions by three. There's impressive use of vertical space as well, even incorporating it into the story. Though the story is simple (love, war, return) it has certain narrative elements that bind it to space, and these aren't afterthoughts but essential elements of the story that rest easily in the big holes left by melodrama.

The love nest is literally on the seventh floor. Our hero literally starts in the sewer. He is elevated by intercession of the church, which provides him with a pair of religious medals. If the sewer-heaven dimension is vertical, these medals provide for horizontal space overlay via a sort of spiritually pure love — each day at 11.

But the space idea is carried in every frame as well. Its not layers like Kurosawa with give us. Nor a camera that would explore and define space like Hitchcock — the camera is stationary here. But its deep.

Gaynor is impressive.

Oh, and it has that most spatial of drugs: absinthe.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

There are some things in life I don't understand. Applied mathematics. Bunions. The working class persistantly voting conservative. Frank Borzage languishing in critical limbo. What is wrong with you people (I mean critics, not you, dear reader)? It can't be because he made silly women's pictures, because Ophuls, Murnau, Sirk and Minnelli have all appeared in Top 100 lists in the last two decades. I don't get it: Borzage was definitely a master: of light, space, plot, critique and emotion. His films - of which I have only seen four, not for want of trying - are among the most emotionally intense and beautiful things in cinema. They offer the straightforward weepie thrills we expect from melodrama, as well as an unexpected critical dimension.

Although I just about prefer the faded self-pity of THREE COMRADES, SEVENTH HEAVEN is probably his masterpiece. It is astonishing in so many ways: let me list some. The more I see of her, the more remarkable an actress I find Janet Gaynor. The film's progressive politics - an impoverished victim, suicidal, prostituted, heinously whipped by her sister, transforms into a loving wife, fierce protector of her home, member of the workforce, and eventual carer of her husband - owes much to her all-encompassing performance.

The use of light and shade to represent the emotional life of the characters. The (Americanised) Expressionistic use of space, which breaks up conventional point of view to provide varying levels of experience and ways of looking. The deceptively delicate poetry of the imagery. The tacit outrage at a system that forces people to live so badly. Even the movie score, uniquely, shows an intelligent perception of what Borzage was trying to do.

Diane and Chico have many obstacles thrown in their way, both individually and collectively, but the most terrifying and inexorable is that of the war. It is quite shocking to find a melodrama - by its nature domestic, local, specific, small-scale and personal - erupt into a war film, that most national of crises. The effect is wrenching, but no more so than the events of the melodrama which alternated the most radiant highs with the most despairing lows. Witness the astonishing, jerking, tracking shot as Diane flees her sister, shattering the smooth rhythm of composition and editing.

Borzage, like no other director before Kubrick, is responsive to the farce of war, as well as its horror. There are sublime scenes of comedy amidst the carnage. The battle scenes put pretenders like ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT to shame; the sheer scale and irrationality of war bursts the screen. Points of identification become lost, the tyranny of destruction is a perversely beautiful thing.

It is in this context that the couple's transcendent love must be seen. What could have been as a desperately mushy romance with its talk of the Bon Dieu and heaven, becomes a necessary rebellion, a refusal to succumb to social pressures, war, nation's follies, domestic horrors, betrayal or death. So the ending is not preposterous, but the perfectly comprehensible hallucination of a woman who, having been raised from hell, could not possibly leave heaven now. Imperishable.

Two scenes stick out in my mind.

1. Janet Gaynor walking across the plank into the apartment where Chico is waiting. She looks like an angel descending to earth.

2. The crane shot where the two lovers run up the stairs to the seventh floor (seventh heaven). This is a place where the two are isolated from the rest of the world and time stands still.

This love story is so much a product of its' era, a time of innocence and charm. The leads, Gaynor and Farrell, are simply perfect as the lovers who are parted by World War I. Janet Gaynor is beautiful and Charles Farrell is handsome. SEVENTH HEAVEN has it all: prostitution, romance, war, a sadistic whipping, and religion. It is melodramatic, to be sure, but this is part of the charm. It is a winner of multiple 1st Academy Awards, and deserves to be seen on DVD in a Fox release. Perhaps if we wrote to Fox Home Entertainment. They allowed that abysmal tape of SEVENTH HEAVEN to be circulated by Critics Choice. It's time to correct a bad judgment.

This movie took me completely by surprise. I had never heard of it, but got it because it's set in Paris. It turned out to be a really beautiful movie. Beautifully shot, beautifully acted. Two rather shy individuals fall in love, almost against their wills, or at least against his will. We watch the relationship grow. Never trite, very seldom over-acted. The battle scenes in World War I are remarkable for their effectiveness.

And the end, which I won't reveal, hits you right in the mid-section and knocks your breath out.

Even someone who doesn't like silents would enjoy this, very much. It makes you understand why some people thought that by the introduction of talkies in that same year, 1927, silents had developed to the point that the first sound pictures were actually something of a regression in many ways.