7th Heaven (1927)

Originally posted to Facebook on 7/16/2018

Our tenth and final film from 1927 was 7th Heaven. This is the second time we've encountered both Frank Borzage, who directed 1925's Lazybones, and also Janet Gaynor, whom we'd seen just the previous month in Sunrise, another 1927 film. Sunrise, along with this film and Street Angel (another movie starring Gaynor that we will probably not have the chance to see) won Gaynor the first Best Actress Oscar -- as the acting awards that year were tied to individuals and not particular performances.

Gaynor plays a young woman who, as a result of an altercation with her physically abusive sister, is homeless and suicidal. She is temporarily taken in by a municipal worker named Chico, played by Charles Farrell, who feels sorry for her, and the film is the story of their ensuing relationship. Farrell and Gaynor have a solid chemistry in this movie, and its success led to them appearing in eleven more films over eight years, both silents and talkies. A few were directed by Borzage, and a few others by David Butler, who appears in this film as Farrell's next door neighbor.

In addition to that chemistry, Farrell gives a distinctive performance; his character is slightly comical, prone to over-dramatic pronouncements about this or that -- and a strong contrast to Gaynor, who begins the film very meekly, and gradually absorbs some of Farrell's confidence -- though she remains completely devoted to him throughout. This approach was one of the slightly jarring things about her performance in Sunrise. It makes a little more sense in this picture, but it does fall into a certain kind of unhealthy female archetype that, based on these two films, Gaynor seems comfortable embodying. (Along those lines I found the following quote from Ida Lupino, who was about ten years younger than Gaynor, "My agent had told me that he was going to make me the Janet Gaynor of England - I was going to play all the sweet roles. Whereupon, at the tender age of thirteen, I set upon the path of playing nothing but hookers.")

But, healthy or not, her role works for this film, and the film itself falls short of greatness, for me, only near the end. But by then it has built up such a reservoir of good will that it is hard to be disappointed.

Next week, before moving on to 1928, we're planning to see 1916's Hell's Hinges, a movie I wanted to circle back and catch as part of this project. It will be the first film we'll see starring William S. Hart, one of the earliest western movie stars. Then we'll return to the normal chronological order, and so I've updated the list with our planned films for 1929, as well as some shorts from the 1920s that we plan to watch before finally moving on to the 1930s. That list as always is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT