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.

I finally had the chance to see the beautifully preserved copy of Seventh Heaven(1927)on DVD and can say that it is really worth it.For many years one aunt who has been a movie fan had told me how great the 1938 remake was but I felt really disappointed after seeing it for reasons that I will not comment here. I kept telling her that the 1927 original was supposed to be much better and I have confirmed it today. I find both Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell brilliant in their performances.The movie should be appealing to modern audiences for the reason that its plot can be summed up in one single word redemption.Janet Gaynor's Diane is proof that you can overcome terrible obstacles in your upbringing and make considerable changes in your self esteem through falling in love in an unexpected place and with an unexpected person. Charles Farrell's Chico is that creature from the sewer who instead of complaining about his fate is full of self worth and incredible self esteem. He may be wrong in many things but is basically a remarkable fellow capable of going out of his way to help others.Little does he know what life has in store for him and how that meeting on the streets will change his life.

Janet Gaynor plays a waif in the great tradition that Lilian Gish created in Broken Blossoms (1919).Giuletta Massina in La Strada (1954) and Samantha Morton in Sweet and Lowdown(1999) are others that I remember very vividly.Charles Farrell is incredibly contemporary and having found stardom right after the arrival of the talkies it is a shame that he did not become a lasting name in the same sort of Gable, Cooper or Joel McCrea.Gaynor and Farrell look wonderful together. it is no wonder that the studio kept pairing them until exhausting the partnership.

All together the production is remarkable.The direction, staging, editing and music are top notch however its considerable length and story coincidences render it as a would be masterpiece.That says a lot.Coincidences and the melodramatic tone present in segments of the 20's films is as unnecessary then as they are today. I recommend Seventh Heaven to all movie fans.Sit and enjoy it.

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.

This could have been something awful. It's high schmaltz, really fever-pitched melodrama, and the plot relies on a huge number of coincidences. But it all works beautifully, through a perfect combination of acting, directing, and photography, not to mention the incredible lighting and set design. This is one of the great silent movies, and one of the great screen romances. Janet Gaynor had quite a year in 1927, turning in fantastic performances in this, as well as F. W. Murnau's Sunrise. 10/10

A year later, Buster Keaton in The Cameraman would do a brilliant spoof of the famous staircase crane shot from Seventh Heaven.

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.