Heaven Can Wait
Studio: Criterion
Aug 20, 2018 Web Exclusive
It’s odd how film-goer expectations change as time passes. The first scene of Heaven Can Wait features a man who just died arriving in the waiting room of Hell where he explains to the Devil why he thinks he deserves to be there. If this were the opening scene of a film made in 2018, audiences would safely bet that the film they are about to see is some sort of psychological horror film, or at the very least, a supernatural comedy similar to NBC’s The Good Place. They would almost certainly be thrown by what audiences actually got when they saw Heaven Can Wait in 1943; a comedy of manners about the life of a feckless playboy featuring no supernatural elements outside of the opening and closing scenes.
Based on a 1934 play by Leslie Bush-Fekete, Heaven Can Wait was the first Technicolor film by director Ernst Lubitsch who, by 1943, had established a reputation as one of Hollywood’s most sophisticated and elegant filmmakers with films like Trouble in Paradise, Ninotchka and To Be or Not to Be. In that regard, Heaven Can Wait is very much on brand, a sumptuous, witty romance set in the Gilded Age starring Don Ameche as Henry Van Cleve, the scion of a wealthy New York family. Although the film traces his entire life - from his birth in 1872 to his death in 1942 - the script compresses the major events to the days surrounding his various birthdays, with almost every major sequence in the film taking place on October 25th of any given year. The other unifying conceit of the film is Henry’s relationships with women. Although his earliest encounters are played for comedy - he charms a little girl in the park with a beetle at age 9 and has a heavily implied but never shown affair with a French maid at age 15 - the main focus is on his lifelong relationship with Martha Strable, played by Gene Tierney. He elopes with her, despite the fact that she’s his cousin’s fiancee, and the rest of the film traces the ups and downs of their marriage as Van Cleve tries to put his womanizing past behind him.
Seventy-five years on, Heaven Can Wait succeeds as well as it did upon release - it was nominated for Best Director and Best Picture, losing both to Casablanca - although it does so in spite of some major elements. The framing story has zero tension, even by the standards of a comedy. This is mostly thanks to the film’s characterization of the Devil, referred to exclusively as “His Excellency”, presumably at the behest of the censors. Actor Laird Cregar plays him with an air of officious politeness and a warm sympathy for Van Cleve’s plight. As Van Cleve himself, Ameche is less the suave Cary Grant-style womanizer one would expect and more a man who never outgrew the sulking sadness of his teen years. It’s a mannered, low-key performance, but one that ultimately taps into some of the sadder themes the film explores; the difficulties of changing as you grow older and the elusiveness of meaningful connections with other people. And he has an able scene partner in Gene Tierney, who brings a knowing sadness to the long-suffering Martha when she’s not singlehandedly justifying the Technicolor with a variety of blue dresses.
Much of the film’s comedy comes from the supporting cast, with the standout being delightful character actor Charles Coburn as Henry’s grandfather and the only Van Cleve with his head on straight. Equally delightful is Allyn Joslyn as Henry’s foppish dolt of a cousin, a character that feels like he could have been the inspiration for Carleton on Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Lubitsch and writer Samson Raphaelson also get quite about of comedic mileage out of poking fun at their wealthy subjects. The production values alone do more than their share of glorifying the idle rich, but it’s not difficult to see Henry’s naive parents, Martha’s squabbling nouveau riche family, and even Henry’s own hollow charms as sly admissions that all of this amounts to nothing. The narrative covers seventy years of turbulent American history, but never once do historical events or outside factors intrude on the story. It’s as thought he handful of sumptuous mansions that provide the setting are hermetically sealed and these fancy people and their petty problems are trapped inside without ever being the wiser.
Criterion’s 4K Blu-ray restoration of Heaven Can Wait does justice to Lubitsch’s Technicolor splendor, blue dresses and all. Special features include several old interviews with Raphaelson as well as 2005 conversation between husband and wife film critic team Molly Haskel and Andrew Sarris, the latter of whom saw the film in theaters upon it’s initial release in 1943.
(www.criterion.com/films/878-heaven-can-wait)
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