As part of a retrospective on Fox Films (
"William Fox Presents: Restorations and Rediscoveries from the Fox Film Corporation")), MoMA is screening "a new digital transfer" of
Seventh Heaven.
The DCP looked pretty good. Definitely not bad, but it could be better. There were a few spots where the image was breaking up a tiny bit as if the scan had a tough time resolving some of the finer details, and maybe a shot or two where the grain management is noticeable, but otherwise the texture was left intact - this was a gauzy-looking film. Aspect ratio initially felt strange - it's closer to a square because of the Movietone soundtrack, correct? The soundtrack is mostly score, but there is some notable use of sound effects. Really clean, but for my tastes, the NR is a little heavy handed - towards the top end, the soundtrack gets a little dead.
The film itself was nearly great, because what works is wondrous. I'm reluctant to call it a masterpiece because quite a bit of it left me cold.
There's no faulting the production. Right from the opening shots in the sewer, the production design is spectacular. It looked all the more impressive after catching a brief glimpse of a popular sitcom this morning - the sets were very plain and too clean to be convincing as anything but a set. But take a look at everything in this film (and probably most films from the William Fox era) - every inch of every surface is loaded with texture. Broken down into individual details, it's almost as if the production aspired to be a documentary, as if the scenery had accumulated dirt and wear from many years of actual usage. But those details don't add up to anything that could be mistaken for real life - the sets as a whole look like a fairy tale, which fits perfectly with this unabashedly romantic material. Pretty astonishing work.
The film really takes off the moment they get to Chico's front door, i.e. the film's famous jaw-dropping vertical shot, followed by the marvelous view from Chico's home that's been used in so many promo materials. Visually it's quite stunning, but Janet Gaynor pretty much takes over the film from this point on with her marvelous performance. This section of the film taps into several themes that are pretty common in cinema (and I imagine theater), but they're identified so strongly with the nature of these art forms and the popular nature of moviegoing that they don't lose their power no matter how familiar they may be. Basically Gaynor gets to live (or act) out the life she really covets and believed to be impossible. Just seeing something you'd want has a strong pull, and this section of the film opens that way when Gaynor first steps into Chico's home, but now she has to take part in it. It's a scenario ripe with possibilities, and God knows how many great films have mined it to great effect -
Vertigo is the first one that comes to mind. They beautifully exploit the tension that comes with a fantasy being tested by reality - an endpoint has been dictated for Chico and Diane's arrangement and as much as she enjoys it, there's a tender moment where she implicitly acknowledges that she's genuinely responding to something that's perhaps illusory, right after Chico brings her a gift.
It was a pretty great film for me, up until the war breaks out. At that point, the film makes it clear that the spiritual ideas introduced in the beginning are
really what it's all about, and they're pretty simplistic ideas - to be brutally frank, maybe even dopey. But the film also becomes a bit slipshod in the way it handles its story elements from this point on. For example, there's nothing wrong with bringing back the sister, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired. Cross-cutting the outbreak of war with Chico's goodbyes to Diane also came off as pretty weak. You get the
idea behind the cross-cutting, but the emotional impact is barely there. Up until the dramatic ending, the rest of the film is mostly spectacle, and this felt a little incongruous to what was a masterful second act. Long stretches of the technically accomplished third act actually felt empty, but there are moments where the re-enactment is quite impressive. (Realizing that the war was only 8 or 9 years removed from the film gave some of these scenes a bit more weight.)
So a little bit of a mixed bag, but much of what's good is extraordinary.
Also, the line "it's true - the government said so" got a hearty laugh.