WasAnnon Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Lightdeossk Captivating movie !

Fatma Suarez The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

evanston_dad "Seventh Heaven," Frank Borzage's poetic romantic melodrama from 1927, was the last of the three films nominated for the first Best Picture Oscar that I have now finished viewing (the other two being Lewis Milestone's "The Racket" and William A. Wellman's "Wings"). It's a sweet little movie about a meek waif (Janet Gaynor) who meets cute with a macho street cleaner (Charles Farrell) and then proceeds to fall in love with him, and he with her, while living together as a fake husband and wife in order to fool the authorities and prevent Gaynor from going to jail (that's another story, and is disposed of within the film's first 20 minutes or so). From there, the film transitions into full-blown melodrama as Farrell goes off to war and Gaynor waits stoically for him to return.This all would be enough to make one gag, if someone other than Borzage had directed it. He had a knack for taking the most saccharine subject matter and handling it with utmost delicacy; as a result, you're utterly charmed and swept up in the film's romanticism even as your head tells you you should be rolling your eyes. It also helps that Farrell and especially Gaynor were very good actors, and they make the characters believable while keeping the rampant sentimentality at bay.Borzage won the first Best Director Oscar for his work, and Gaynor was Oscar's first Best Actress, winning for this and two other films, "Street Angel" and "Sunrise," back when Oscars were given for entire bodies of work over a year and not for one specific film. Writer Benjamin Glazer completed the film's triplicate wins by taking home the first Oscar for Writing (Adaptation), before a screenplay award even existed."Seventh Heaven" was passed over in the Best Picture category for "Wings," and it also lost Art Direction (for Harry Oliver's impressive Parisian loft and WWI battlefield sets), but with five nominations it emerged as the most nominated film in Oscar's debut year.Grade: A

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.

westerfield My wife and I saw this film 35 years ago at a retrospective house - a single showing with a packed house. We witnessed something we'd never seen before or since. When Diane finally finds the courage to stand up to her sister - taking the whip away and whipping her sister out of the apartment - the entire audience stood up and cheered. The film affected us so much that we named our daughter Diane. We didn't see the film again until it was released on VHS several years ago. If anything, having experienced more of life, it affected us even more strongly. We each went through multiple tissues crying tears of joy. Now we often say, "Al - Patricia - heaven!" Borzage has never failed to get at least a small weep from me but Seventh Heaven is his best.

Peter Fairburn There is some pedestrian acting in Seventh Heaven; furthermore, there are situations which in the world of today seem crass beyond belief. But anyone who can watch this film, with its original tints and Movietone score, without a complete sense of wonder at what film once was, and might be again if the business of films allowed, is dead emotionally and spiritually. It is no wonder Janet Gaynor won an Oscar for this, and other, film in 1927. Frank Borzage, who seems to be the forgotten director of all time, deserved sainthood for getting at least a credi8ble performance from Charles Farrell. His deft handling of the material and the camera is really astounding. His use of the helix as a symbol of re-birth, not original, is flawless and we still get fatigued walking with the two lovers up seven flights of stairs with his excellent crane shot. One suspects Lewis Milestone learned much from the war scenes and I wonder how Borzage would film Iraq, Afghanistan, or the World Trade Centre.Simply put, no cinema fan can comment intelligently on film without seeing this masterpiece. I prefer it to Sunrise, no easy thing to admit. I rate it a 9 simply because Farrell is objectionable in so many ways. But Janet Gaynor is a wonder and Frank Borzage deserves a university course of his own.