HEAVEN CAN WAIT

US, 1943, 112 minutes, Colour.
Gene Tierney, Don Ameche, Laird Cregar, Marjorie Main, Charles Coburn.
Directed by Ernst Lubitsch.

This was a very sophisticated fantasy-comedy of the early forties. Directed by veteran comedy director, Ernst Lubitsch, it showed an American family in the nineteenth century and traced its history. However, the focus of attention was the Devil and his administering the destinies of the family.

Laird Cregar is very effective as the Devil. Gene Tierney and Don Ameche were an attractive hero and heroine. There was good support from Marjorie Main and Charles Coburn who was soon to win an Oscar for The More The Merrier. There was a great popularity In the early forties for fantasies and incarnations of the Devil and God-figures. The title was used for a Warren Beatty film in 1978. However the title, while coming from this film, actually named a remake of another fantasy of the time with Robert Montgomery and Claude Rains, Here Comes Mr Jordan. A very good example of literate and sophisticated comedy of the 1940s.

1. How enjoyable was this filmy as a comedy, as a fantasy?

2. How was this film typical of the 40's in its styles screen-play, acting, colour etc? Is it a good example of 40's film-making?

3. The director Ernst Lubitsch is famous for his light frothy and genteel touch. Would this film be typical Lubitsch material and style? How light was the touch? How genteel the frothiness of a human comedy? How lightly moralizing? How satisfying?

4. The meaning and tone of the title? How successful was the film as comedy? In its characters and situations? Comedy conventions and its use of them? How successful was the film as fantasy: the opening and the endings the conversation with the Devil? The purgatory overtones of the fantasy? How melodramatic was the film in the events that were remembered? How much of the film was a comedy-parable? Did the film have this kind of impact on its audience?

5. Comment on the quality of the fantasy: the portrayal of the Devil as a modern businessman, the representations of heaven and hell, the lady who came in and gave her life-story and went to hell, the overtones of purgatory and judgement. How useful was this as a structure for the film and giving the film its tone?

6. How successful was the screenplay in its structure of the fantasy and memory and flashbacks? Its portrayal of the different faces of Henry van Cleve? Its ability to move over various years of his life without creating too much gap? The portrayal of a life and the momentum of this portrayal?

7. How interesting a character was Henry van Cleve? A nineteenth-century man? A twentieth-century man? Our first seeing him as old, as thinking himself not worthy of heaven, as preparing a place for himself in hell? (How congenial a hell?) His story of himself as a boy, his relationship with his mother and father, the French governess, his cousin? The importance of his meeting his wife, the encounter in the book-store, the birthday and the elopement? His responsibility and irresponsibility? The fact that so much money was at hand? His response to his wife and his child? The impact of her running away? The effort he made to get her back? The happiness of their life together, worrying about the son, buying-off the actress? The impact of his wife's death? The importance of his growing old gracefully? Depending on his son? The meaning of his own death? In what way was Henry van Cleve an everyman figure?

8. How attractive was his wife? A film heroine? Her Kansas background and her parents, her looking up the book in the shop, her response to Henry, the decision to elope, the quality of their love? The importance of her running away and being able to be lured back? The happiness of the rest of their life together? the care for their song the impact of her death? In what way was the character an everywoman? How particularly an American everywoman?

9. How enjoyable was Grandfather? The fact that Henry took after him, the irony of his boisterousness? The attractiveness of his so-called wickedness, compared with his own son? His helping Henry with advice? His helping Henry get his wife back?

10. The contrast with Henry's mother and father? A prim and ignorant father? A fussy mother? The nature of their authority, the use of money? The employing of the French maid? The ignorance about the drinking? What comment was being made on Victorian parents, American Victorian parents?

11. The couple from Kansas, their building up the meat industry, the strained relationship between them, their reaction to their daughters elopement, her return to them? The comment made on marriage and relationships via these characters?

12. The comedy with the cousin and his primness? Was there any pathos in his losing his fiancee? His role later in helping her run away?

13. How charming was this film? A picture of the American heritage via charm but not depth? The flavour of humanity pervading the film?

14. How successful then was it as part of the history of America? Its comedy? its human drama? the film as a religious and moral fable?