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.
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.