Frank Borzage's 7th HEAVEN (1927)

(4K restoration - I could've sworn it said 35mm on their website, fine, it was a sublime restoration anyway - with live musical accompaniment with Ben Model at the Jacob Burns Film Center - I think this was the room the first time I saw 2001 theatrically 20 years ago, too)

"I am an Athiest. But I'll give Him one more chance!"

And: "Don't be afraid.  I'm not afraid."

Janet Gaynor... ❤️ Also, Charles Farrell in some shots reminds me of (don't laugh) Luke Perry, circa like 1993.  If only he was a surfer instead of a Street Cleaner... 

The elements in the story of 7th Heaven are at such a pitch of high Melodrama - I'd accept the argument if you wanted to throw it that it gets into operatic in the final reel at least if not before - and it should be much too much.  The magic and power of the movie is what director Frank Borzage does with this story to make it into one of the most romantic films (and sometimes preposterously but always entertainingly so) of the last big gasp of the Silent era.

This is a love story that happens out of one of those moments that happens largely in the movies (or *Korean television dramas) where Diane (Gaynor) is at her lowest point after telling her rich aunt and uncle the truth at a bad moment (she and her sister aren't "good" girls whatever that means in like 1915 Paris), and her sister whips Diane senseless and she is on the street ready to just do herself in. 

Then at just this moment comes Chico (Farrell, ok the name is silly, it should go to a Jew from the Bronx, but I digress), who tells the craven-faced abusive sister to take a hike, and in a moment where the cops are about to take Diane away over some misunderstanding (because the sister ratted), Chico says Diane is actually his wife.  The cops say they have to come by to check, Diane offers to come stay with him to play wife, and, once she ascends those stairs to that 7th floor and she sees how generous and thoughtful Chico is, she falls in love for real.  And then him, too.

And would you believe that just at the moment they are about to actually get married - he happens to have a good dress for her, as men who've just gotten hired as street cleaners tend to do - one of Chico's cohorts comes and says "oh, wait, you know world war one has started, time for us to go - in an hour!" (Ok, not exactly those words, but close enough).  

Then for almost the rest of the film is the two love-birds separated as she waits patiently, diligently, working in a factory while another military man (one of those stuff shirts who looks like he's always got a stick up his rear) tries to woo her while Chico fights in the war and looks like he's about to die.  When....

There is more incident that happens throughout the film, but really not that much.  What marks 7th Heaven as being so special a film is not necessarily the parts of the story exactly, although what brings the couple together bit by bit over the course of a number of days is handled really well by the performers as well as Borzage, but what deeper meanings come out of the relationship.  Chico is an Athiest, as he mentions more than once (really upon his first meeting with the depressed Diane), since he's given so much of his time and even money - ten francs for candles, mon dieu - and yet Diane is a believer.  

He does give in and try to believe in God when this whole commitment and love thing has to be more real, because it is felt truly between the two.  And once this all comes to a head in the end, as wild a swig of Melodrama you will ever have in any movie once it gets to that ending, it feels like the ideas of belief and God and disbelief and what we put into our vision of God (and that is really, to me, just... love) at a heightened plane.

And there's just the immense pleasure of seeing these two on screen.  The film might lose me from being as emotionally spellbound during the war time scenes, as brilliantly staged and even funny as they end up being (dont forget Paris's taxi drivers, after all), but that's largely because of how much was locked in between Farrell and Gaynor.  This was *the* year for Janet Gaynor between this and Sunrise (I wonder if someone has written a doctoral thesis about how this film is kind of like a cross between Sunrise and The Big Parade... or maybe not), where she pulls the audience so wholly into what she is feeling and showing in her feeling. 

She is big, but natural in that bigness, and she gets to craft a character that has growth and changes during the story; you see Diane so subservient and even ignorant early on that the hidden weapon of the film's success is that as powerful a love story as it is it wouldn't work as well if it wasnt also about Diane self-actualizing and realizing she... doesnt have to be afraid and that in and of itself is so much for anyone, much less a woman, who has to live without her love for so long.

This is not a perfect movie, but who cares when what Borzage achieves hits you in the (to borrow a word from the movie) gizzard and other places?  You get the sense this has a deeper spiritual dimension for Borzage, and I think the film works even if you, watching it a century on, are also an Athiest.  And I also get the sense that Borzage understand the magnificent power that stairs and the dramatic heft of a seventh floor walk up means when it comes to a romance. 

(*yes this was for my wife who is reading this as soon as I post. Hello 👋 🫂)