Larry41OnEbay-2 SEVENTH HEAVEN, premiered May 6th of 1927, Produced by William Fox and distributed by Goldwyn Pictures.Here's an actual TRIVIA Pursuit question: Who preceded Judy Garland in the title role of the first film version of A Star Is Born? She is also the answer to another Trivial Pursuit question: who was the winner of the very first Academy Award as Best Actress, at the inaugural 1927-28 ceremony? And if that does not recommend the film enough to you, SEVENTH HEAVEN also received the most nominations of any film at the first Academy Awards ceremony, with five.The movie is a romance starring Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell. Frank Borzage won the first Academy Award for Best Director and Benjamin Glazer won the first Oscar for Best Writing which was based on the play adaptation from the novel by Benjamin Harrison.Seventh Heaven is the 13th highest grossing silent film in cinema history, taking in more than $2.5 million at the box office in 1927.Seventh Heaven featured the song "Diane" by Erno Rapee and Lew Pollack, who wrote the song specifically for the film.A comparatively unknown remake of Seventh Heaven was produced as a sound film in 1937, starring Simone Simon, James Stewart, Jean Hersholt, and Gregory Ratoff, with Henry King directing.Some of you may recognize character actor George E. Stone in the beginning who usually played small gangsters in comic relief here playing a character called, "Sewer rat." Janet Gaynor with her big-eyed, small doll's face was a five foot tall actress known for her cleft chin and very expressive eyes. Six foot two, Charles Farrell could fill a room with his optimism and hope. Frank Borzage, a former actor directs with an intuitive sense of emotional temperature; he keeps things boiling under the surface while the screen only registers a simmer.Based on a long-running stage success and wildly popular upon its first release, SEVENTH HEAVEN is probably Frank Borzage's most famous film, the one where all his principles of mystical romance come together most distinctively. This exquisite tale of romance between street waif Diane (played by Janet Gaynor) and Paris sewage worker Chico (played by Charles Farrell) stresses the redemptive side of couplehood so persuasively that otherworldly connotations, like the strong ray of light that literally shines down on them after their various trials, seem only fair and natural. Borzage ennobles their poverty-stricken lives to such an extent that even the cruelties of war don't stand a chance when they are working against it together. It's the perfect exchange, lovers drawing strength from one another and ascending onto a different, metaphysical plane—you feel they could fly off the rooftops if they wanted to. Borzage patiently catches the smallest details of love, most memorably in the scene where Diane, alone in their garret, picks up Chico's coat and strokes it tenderly as if it were him. When the six-foot-two-inch Farrell kisses Gaynor passionately and holds her tiny five-foot frame up in the air, they truly look like a couple blessed by a winged divinity, with the space around them seemingly vibrating with some kind of spiritual presence. Watching them together in the same shot is an uncanny experience, one not easy to explain.His gift for transforming the mundane, commonplace world into something beautiful and dreamlike made the films of Frank Borzage extraordinary. 7th Heaven, and the heartbreaking performance of its star Janet Gaynor, virtually defined not only the Borzage style, but also Gaynor's screen image and to an even greater extent, romantic love in Hollywood. The story of a Paris waif, saved by a sewer worker who pities her, was so wildly successful Fox spent years trying to equal it. Nothing ever did. The pairing of Gaynor with handsome leading man Charles Farrell presented a couple so attractive, likable and with such genuine chemistry, the two would go on to appear in 12 films together, including two more with Borzage.Borzage's use of beautiful set design: the girls' decrepit home, the ancient cobblestone streets, Chico's rooftop garret and even the sewer, evoke an atmosphere that is both unreal and timeless. The ravishing sets created by Harry Oliver, whom Borzage used many times, add to the rich fairy-tale mood of a rather simple story, giving the characters an iconic quality.The acting may be a bit direct but in silent films they had to communicate more visually and sometimes it seemed over the top, but keep watching their eyes and you'll never loose the focus of the story. Film critic and historian Andrew Sarris described SEVENTH HEAVEN'S magic as "Borzage's commitment to love over probability." To some 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.

francois-massarelli Some films are brilliant. Others are fine. This one is beyond category. Like Murnau's Sunrise, for instance, or Sjöström's The Wind, it is amazingly impossible to describe without going over the top. Especially since it concerns what the French Surrealistes dubbed "L'Amour Fou", the love that goes beyond reason, beyond society barriers, beyond the capacity to back down, and involves the story of a man(Charles Farrell) and a woman(Janet Gaynor) who discover passion through co-existing, and eventually meet up after one of them actually dies. Or does he?Beginning inauspiciously in a reconstructed, Dickensian Paris, the adventures of Chico and Diane start by an encounter, and in a scene that is paralleled by other Borzage films(A Man's Castle, Mannequin, Street Angel)has the man sheltering the woman at his home on the roofs to protect her both from prostitution and her family; This type of cohabitation is often the key to Borzage's love affairs in his melodramas, as if it was necessary to cohabit before discovering a connection between two people; at Chico's, they will co-exist, and fall in love, and even(As in Man's Castle and The Mortal storm)resort to a mock marriage before being separated by war: the necessity of fashioning a sacred link will elevate their love further. Chico is drafted into the French ranks; all the ensuing days though, they will "communicate" by taking an 11 o'clock break in whatever they're doing, in order to be reunited in thought, until one day Chico does not answer Diane's message. After a period of despair, Diane is ready to give him up, but as the war finishes, Chico unexpectedly returns: Borzage shows him in the street, blinded by a wound, but transfigured by love, walking through the cheers and congratulations of the people around him, as if both born again from the atmosphere of joy and indifferent to it, since his only goal is to see Diane again, to reach her before she stops believing in him. As the two lovers reunite they are all alone, in Seventh Heaven. This "ascension" motif is echoed in a surprisingly effective way by the fact that Chico works in the sewers when he rescues Diane(She is figuratively speaking "in the gutter" herself)and lives just under the roofs, where he can see the stars; thus we are foretold what the movement will be; Borzage had a set built to allow the vertical use of a camera in order to shoot the ascension of the stairways in one take. Another sign of the times is the expressionistic depiction of war by Borzage (Who will repeat the device in Lucky star two years later) war, seen in this film, is mud, explosions, sweat and fear, with no . It is a world entirely deprived of realism, but more simply it's a world that neither Chico nor Diane want to acknowledge. Apart from being very close to Murnau's experiments in stylization(Faust, Tartuff, Sunrise, The last Laugh), it is also a significant departure, on the part of an American director, from the realism of war as it was seen in The Big Parade(Vidor, 1925) or Wings(Wellman)the same year. Ford would partially repeat the move in his "Four Sons" in 1928 for... Fox. As everything in the film, war is a mental place, hence the possibility of escaping it mentally at a given time, or even simply an annoying obstacle between Chico and Diane, just as the notion of duty(Chico's duty as a soldier keeps him far away from his lover), or morals(If they submitted to the moral standards of their day, Chico would never offer Diane any shelter, let alone permanent accommodation, not even with a fake wedding): what we see in this film is desire elevated to the point of becoming a conduct. Chico desires Diane, or to be with Diane so much that he resuscitates. War, social conventions, death, nothing can stand in the way.Seventh Heaven is at first glance very usual melodramatic fare, but enhanced by the impressive skill of director Frank Borzage on the one hand, and also benefiting on the other hand very much from the rivalry of Murnau's Sunrise, that was also shot at the Fox Studios at the time. Everybody at Fox was invited to see what Murnau was doing, and the dailies provoked many a vocation. Ford, for instance, never recovered from seeing these images. Seventh Heaven is probably the first film having benefited directly from Murnau's influence, and it is a blessing that Borzage, without topping Murnau's effort, was able to almost equal it, by refusing to compromise by tampering with the lack of logic of the plot, or by allowing his two actors(Gaynor and Farrell, brilliant as ever together)free reign in the expression of their emotions, as suggested by the very genre of the film: Borzage's infamous tendency to weep on the shooting of his films is reported to have always been a key element of his direction on such films as this or his powerful MGM melodramas of the late 30s. To sum up, these twelve reels are an emotional experience, like the aforementioned masterpieces, and decidedly a key film from an exceptional period in the history of cinema.

zetes A beautiful melodrama, which, at its best, nears Sunrise. Janet Gaynor starred in both of them, and one the first Best Actress Oscar for her work in those two films. She plays a destitute Parisian girl kicked out of her home by her father. When a police officer attempts to arrest her, a sewer worker who has just been promoted to a street cleaner (Charles Farrell) selflessly claims that she is his wife. The two have to uphold this charade for a few days, but, by the end, they are in love. By the time they realize this and get married, though, WWI has begun and the men are off to war. The first half, maybe more, is the romantic part, and it is wonderful. Some of the best filmmaking around, and a couple of scenes that are just gorgeous. I will never forget sweet Janet Gaynor putting Farrell's coat on the back of a chair and then, sitting in that chair, she puts the coat's arms around her body. The second half, the war half, is very good, but it pulls down the magical romance into reality. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, I suppose, no matter how much I was enjoying that first half. It's a good war film, at least the equal of Wings. The battle sequences are well produced and harrowing. Meanwhile, Gaynor faces the no-longer harmless flirtations of a Colonel. The direction is always fantastic. The visual and narrative motif of altitude is very well done, with Farrell beginning in the sewers and, a bit later, he ascends to the stars in his tall apartment building. Seventh Heaven might have been a masterpiece, but it completely crumbles by the end. The end should have written itself. The end of the war should have been the sign that Farrell had not abandoned Gaynor. Unfortunately, we have to deal with an entirely tacked-on ending. It can't ruin the film, of course. 9/10.

lugonian SEVENTH HEAVEN, released as 7th HEAVEN (Fox, 1927), directed by Frank Borzage, is a tender love story set in pre-World War I Paris that unites two unlikely people to become popular twosome of the silver screen, the pert and angelic Janet Gaynor and the tall but not-so-rugged Charles Farrell for the first of twelve movies they were to appear together.Chico Robas (Charles Farrell) is a sewer worker in the streets of Paris whose ambition is to be promoted to street-cleaner. Although he is self-confident, he lacks religious faith, believing God has disappointed him to a point of becoming an atheist. Not far away is Diane (Janet Gaynor), a frightful young girl, is being abused by her vengeful sister, Nana (Gladys Brockwell), who pleasures herself by whipping the frightful thing for the slightest cause. When Nana feels she's been cheated out of living the life of luxury with her visiting rich uncle (Brandon Hurst) due to Diane's truthfulness to his questions of not actually being "good girls," Nana grabs her whip and starts beating her as she runs out the door and into the streets. Lying in the gutter and in the process of being strangled, Chico comes to the girl's rescue, frightening Nana away. Shortly after-wards, Diane decides to take her own life with Chico's knife, but is soon stopped by him. When Diane is denounced to the police by Nana, Chico, once more comes to her defense, telling the law-abiding officer the waif is his wife. As the police intend on checking out his story, Chico, who now feels pity for the girl, invites her to staying his apartment, a seventh floor walk up flat which Diane soon calls, "Seventh Heaven." During that time, Chico obtains the job he wants and looks forward to bigger and better things. As for Diane, because of Chico's self-confidence that makes him a very "remarkable fellow," she no fears life. She soon proves her courage first by defeating Nana when confronted with her face to face, and after-wards by going through life alone after Chico enters the military with the outbreak of the Great War. In one of the film's most memorable scenes set during their long separation, Chico and Diane communicate with each other through their hearts and minds every night at the stroke of eleven as promised prior to his departure. Then on one particular evening, Chico is caught in a bombing explosion which sends the message immediately to Diane, now occupying her time as a munitions worker, sensing something has seriously gone wrong.This sentimental love story, based on the play by Austin Strong, by 1927 standards, was so popular that it earned Janet Gaynor an Academy Award as Best Actress, the first to be honored for such an award. Simultaneously, she won for SUNRISE (1927) and STREET ANGEL (1928 while Frank Borzage was voted as Best Director. Twentieth Century-Fox remade SEVENTH HEAVEN in 1937 with an added plus to spoken dialog instead of the use of title cards, with the new Diane and Chico enacted by Simone Simon and James Stewart. Like Gaynor, Simon was short and fixed up to resemble her while Stewart, like Farrell, was the ever-so-tall "remarkable fellow." However, SEVENTH HEAVEN appears to work well as a silent than during the changing times of the 1930s, which by then seemed old-fashioned and outdated. With the sound version 22 minutes shorter than the original two hour silent, the elements between two central characters remains the same, right through the young couple climbing seven flights of stairs, an exhausted journey, as a trip to "seventh heaven," hence the title. Had SEVENTH HEAVEN been made some years earlier, it is my envision that it would have been directed by DW Griffith, starring Lillian Gish as the abused waif, with Richard Barthelmess playing Chico.Also in the supporting cast are Ben Bard as Colonel Brissac; David Butler as Gobin; Albert Gran as Boul; Emile Chautard as Father Chevillion; and George E. Stone as The Sewer Rat. Gladys Brockwell as the abusive sister, stands out with her performance in her key scenes, especially with those vengeful eyes that would be an instant reminder to resembling that of Joan Crawford shortly before Crawford began looking like Crawford.SEVENTH HEAVEN was one of the twelve selected films to appear during the summer months on public television's 1975 presentation of "The Silent Years" as hosted by Lillian Gish, with a piano score by William Perry from the Paul Killian collection, and off-screen female vocalist singing to the title tune of "Seventh Heaven." In the Critic's Choice Video Masterpiece Collection distributed in 1997, the SEVENTH HEAVEN copy remained the same as it played on TV back in 1975, with color tinting as an added treat. The Perry piano score was replaced with the original synchronized Fox Movietone score featuring the song and vocalization of "Diane" in its soundtrack.In spite of how SEVENTH HEAVEN will play to movie goers today, the movie itself represents the kind of movies made popular during the silent era and should be treated as such. But it is Janet Gaynor, under the tender direction of Frank Borzage, whose expert know-how, succeed in making this sugary romance into something special. (***)