"7th Heaven" Review

 

by Daniel White

I can't think of a better way to usher in the new year than to go back in time to the early days of film. And while we're at it, let's celebrate the birthday of one of the pioneers of the motion picture industry, William Fox, by watching one of his greatest successes, 7th Heaven (1927). Directed by the legendary Frank Borzage, it's a romantic melodrama that would be impossible to promote in today's knowing, skeptical, eyebrow-raised-in-irony world. A seven-year-old would scoff at the unfiltered sentimentality of 7th Heaven (that is, if you could even coax a seven-year-old to watch a silent, B&W movie!).

Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell star as Diane and Chico, two lowly denizens of impoverished Paris. She lives with an alcoholic sister (the fearsome Gladys Brockwell ) who regularly beats her with a bull whip (I kid you not)! He works in the sewers, dreaming of being a street-sweeper. Chico rescues the despondent Diane from her brutal sister, Nana, and with no place to go, allows her to live with him. Expressing indifference, he stands firm in his determination not to fall in love. However, that quickly dissolves, and the virile sewer rat and the grateful gutter urchin begin an affair of epic proportions.

This is a film that not only salutes romantic love, it champions it as the only reason for man's existence. It is also a tale of religious faith. At the onset Chico is a militant atheist, but by movie's end, and one world war later, he is a devout believer in "Bon Dieu."

As corny as Kansas in August as the song says, 7th Heaven is also a beautifully crafted, lushly made film that director Borzage has handled with tenderness and artful camera work. The scene where the two climb the steps to Chico's attic abode is memorable. Up the winding stairs our darlings go, while Borzage's camera follows them, vertically ascending floor by floor. Indelible. This would be the first of 11 movies Gaynor and Farrell would appear in together, and it's easy to see why they were so popular. "America's Favorite Lovebirds" make for a sexy couple who complement each other parfait-perfect. He is big, strapping and a tad gangly, while she is petit, winsome and in need of protection.

Of course the truth is altogether different. Janet Gaynor was most likely a lesbian who seems to have had no trouble taken care of herself, and any off screen dalliances between the two, just fanciful manure manufactured by Fox studio.

I ladore silent movies and urge anyone who confesses to having an interest in cinema, and hasn't done so, to check one out. Why not start with 7th Heaven? It's a dazzler! Nominated for Best Picture, 7th Heaven won Academy Awards for best actress, best director, and best adapted screenplay (Benjamin Glazer). Distributed by Fox Film Corporation with a synchronized musical soundtrack, 7th Heaven is available on YouTube.