the audience applauded

Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

Best movie ever!

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

I wanted to like "7th Heaven," and I did for most of the first half. I like the way it begins in a literal and figurative sewer, with one worker trying to look up the skirts of a couple of women standing on a sewer grate. I like Chico's cynicism and atheism, believing society has kept him in the sewers in spite of the fact he's "a remarkable fellow." I like how the camera moves ahead of Diane—played by Janet Gaynor—as her alcoholic sister chases her through the streets with a whip. Gladys Brockwell is marvelous as the sister who led them into prostitution and crime. I like how Chico rescues Diane by suspending the sister by her wrists over a man hole, threatening to drop her into the muck where she belongs. I like Chico's misogyny that doesn't jibe with his random acts of kindness, and how he takes care of Diane in spite of himself. I like Gaynor's wide, sad eyes. She is very good and deserved her Academy award.What I did not like is how the presence of the Church influences the development of the characters' lives. The Parish Priest promotes Chico to street washer, and asks him to guard religious medals, making it seems as if the medals alone are the reason for Chico's and Diane's blossoming love. I also did not like how WWI jarringly erupts midway through the film without foreshadowing, and how Chico, heretofore a critic of society, responds unquestioningly to France's appeal to patriotism. I didn't like how his love for Diane is no longer implied and subtle, but emerges full blown, heightened by the prospect that they are to be parted by war.From the beginning of the film Charles Farrell as Chico overacts. But he gets worse as the film lapses into overt sentimentality that makes us all too aware our emotions are being manipulated. From the point where the war intrudes the film wallows in undiluted melodrama, and Farrell's mugging becomes as annoying as the clumsy and confused montage of the mobilization of Paris' taxicabs to transport troops to the front. Diane's sister comes back to reassert her dominance, and sweet little Diane literally and uncharacteristically turns the whip on her sister. Chico returns from the trenches, converted by "the Bon Dieu" who made him blind so that he could see.All these arbitrary transformations, however, distract us from the fact that these characters were good people to begin with. As long as they are good in spite of themselves, as long as they unselfconsciously transcend their circumstances the action seems natural and the characters real. It's when they become romantic stereotypes that the film breaks the mirror it had been holding up to life.I don't see silent films as separate from talking films. Any movie that relies on language for character exposition (telling and not showing) has failed. Non-talking film has an advantage because it must pack a maximum of information in every frame to engage the mind and eye. The tracking shot that shows Diane fleeing her whip-wielding sister, the camera's point of view as the sewer worker looks up the women's dresses, and as we look down through the man hole through which Chico seems about to drop Diane's sister shows how inventive the camera can be when it has to be. But silent cinema's need to stick to simple themes did not relieve film-makers of the responsibility to examine the ambiguities inherent in real life."7th Heaven" was a huge hit. But the box office success and Oscar wins for Borzage and Glazer as best director and writer speak more about Americans' fondness for sentimentality and need for tidy endings than it does about the nature of non-talking cinema in general. In Europe performances were often more naturalistic and the plotting more realistic than in American film. Hence the reason for the box office failure of the critically acclaimed "Sunrise," made with complete artistic freedom by German émigré director F. W. Murnau in the same year.

'Seventh Heaven (1927)' is usually compared to 'Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927),' and not without reason. Director Frank Borzage has a keen sense for lighting and shot composition, perhaps not as effortlessly graceful as that of Murnau, but the film superbly explores three-dimensional space, most memorably in a vertical long take that follows the characters up seven floors of staircases, and a backwards tracking shot through the crowded trenches of a battlefield. Janet Gaynor, who also starred in 'Sunrise,' is once again a perfect picture of fragility and helplessness, a persona at which she was bettered only by Lillian Gish. More interesting, however, is that Gaynor's character undergoes a startling character arc, developing from a weak, embattled victim – a trampled flower – to a decisive and assertive woman, a member of the workforce, and an independent but devoted wife. Her husband, played by Charles Farrell, likewise undergoes a transformation, of the spiritual kind. Together, they share a love so definitive that the formula has since become familiar, but Borzage keeps it fresh.Perhaps the greatest miracle about 'Seventh Heaven' is that the romance works at all. Farrell's Chico is a haughty, athletic sewer worker, so determined of his own worth that he bores his grotesque colleagues with anecdotes of his future greatness. Gaynor's Diane, a small creature routinely lashed by her sleazy sister, is at first an object of derision for Chico, who uses her mere existence to affirm his atheism. Indeed, so aloof is his attitude towards her that I could scarcely believe that the pair were to fall in love, but the transition is carried out gradually and convincingly. As in most great romances, the two star-crossed lovers are swiftly separated by the onset of war. Here, once again, Borzage's keen eye for visual storytelling results in some wonderful sequences of conflict, with his portrayal of the battlefield perhaps serving as inspiration for Lewis Milestone's war drama 'All Quiet on the Western Front (1930).' Only with the occasional moments of misplaced comedy – the ritualistic bowing of the street-sweepers, for example – does the director fumble with the film's mood.This reviewer being an atheist, films dealing with a central religious theme face an uphill battle. Chico opens the film not unlike myself, as an obstinate atheist who curses God for failing to answer his prayers. Christianity intercedes through a kind-hearted priest, who offers Chico his dream-job as a street-sweeper, as well as two religious necklaces. Predictably, our hero is converted by the film's end, and, indeed, stages a resurrection that borders on Biblical. This "miraculous" ending could easily have had me rolling my eyes, but – somehow, and against all odds – it didn't. Borzage doesn't play Chico's survival as a startling revelation, and nor does it feel tacked-on, as does the fate of Murnau's hotel doorman in 'The Last Laugh (1924).' Alongside Diane's stubborn insistence that her husband is still alive, to actually see him pushing through the crowds seemed like the most natural thing in the world. And even if Chico is dead, then his wife is already there in Heaven, on the seventh floor, waiting to greet him.

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.

...but I live near the stars.Another sublime work by John Borzage,one of the greatest directors America has ever had.Charles Farrell and Janet Gaynor were the romantic couple of that era.Both were able to transcend the limitations they were working under,that is to say ,to convey any emotion without using voices.The soundtrack is particularly good including military marches ("la Madelon" sung in French,"La Marche Lorraine")as well as French folk songs ("J'ai Du Bon Tabac" "Fanfan La Tulipe")and even opera arias.Remarkable scenes: Gaynor,sadistically whipped by her sister ,and the relatives from South America,who would not take in those whores Chico (Farrell)discussing faith with his fellow men in the streets at night ,and the "miracle" : the priest telling him he would become a street-washer."The Bon Dieu" (in French in all the lines) cares about you!).Chico and Diane in the boy's apartment on the seventh floor : this is probably the most romantic scene in the whole silent age ,with the eventual exception of the scene in the church in Murnau's "Daybreak" which also featured Gaynor.These extraordinary lines by Chico: "I work in a sewer but I live near the stars.The historical episode of "les Taxis de la Marne" and the old man speaking of his old car :" She gave her life for France" .More than "the river" the complete version of which is unfortunately impossible to see,"Seventh Heaven" contained the seeds of what Borzage (and others) would do later The lovers against a hostile world subject reappear in "little man what now?" and "Mortal Storm" .All in all,the woman is stronger than the man ,it's her who builds the couple ;here,Chico did not want to say "I love you" ,he thought it was silly.And he is a remarkable fellow though; the loyal male friendship between Gobin and Chico predates the extraordinary camaraderie depicted in "three comrades" The priest and Chico's road to Damascus ,we will find them back in "Strange Crago" ,where Borzage's Christian concerns admirably emerge again.The telepathy,the supreme hour (the French title is "l'Heure Suprême" ) when the two lovers,although they are worlds apart,during which they are "together" not only influenced Henry Hathaway for "Peter Ibbetson" but also predates Borzage's own " I'll always loved you" where the two heroes communicate by music.The last pictures are so strong we do not know at first if it's reality or if Chico takes Diane away into a dream...or onto the true Seventh Heaven.But we,the audience, we were in the Seventh Heaven .Borzage was a genius,period.