"7TH HEAVEN."

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19174, 3 December 1927, Page 7

"7TH HEAVEN."

* A VERY REMARKABLE PICTURE. ' i "7th Heaven" will open at the Grand Theatre next week, when, among a galaxy of truly great pictures that have been at that house, it will surely stand out as the greatest. "This," says Air Seymour Hicks, "is indeed a Buper picture, not o:dinarv convention bolstered up with ten thousand supers .. . ~ but a tine human drama with a story basically correct from its very outset, winding its way through the tangle of human passion to a legitimate and brilliant conclusion. The onlooker is not annoyed with the usual dragged in comic relief. There are none of the usual bigh-faluting subtitles, and there is not one ot the ridiculous close-ups of any kind. Here is a picture that sets a standard so devastating in its simplicity and continuity that it will make even fools become critics when they witness lesser things. fThe world of art has not enough hats to take off to Air Frank Dorznge (the director). 1 hato to say it, but this '7th Heaven' will give cause to make the theatre proper think furiously, and indeed also Air lio:zage's screen contemporaries, for he ha 3 made ninety per cent, of all previous him producers seem old-fashioned. Atmosphere there is; spectacle there is; tears there are, and natural laughter, and better than this even, shining out above them all, brilliant simplicity. What gentler love scenes have we ever seen! Ncnel What greater delicacy in treatment of things that in other hands have been most indelicate? Where such atmosphere, whether it be on the field of battle or in those periods of rapt silence when the unmarried lovers are 'luoking upwards' always, towards the God that one doubted, and both came to know! '7th Heaven,' grand story that it is, is made still more grand by the subtle touches of a master possessed of a poet's mind. It is perfect. Of war scenes in this picture there uro a number, and when I realised they were coming, I had my first mental jolt. I have seen so many. I was sorry that the 6impie and beautiful love story in which I had lost myself was to be interrupted by such familiar things. I was certain that there would be the estaminet and the shells, the mud and the misery, holding in its clutches spotlessly dressed Red Cross nurse. It was convinced that the low comedian would die with a laugh on his lips, and that an American soldier, having just won tho war, would breathe his last in a shell hole kissing tho Stars and Stripes. But what was my surprise in '7th Heaven to see none of these things. I saw the war in Its awful reality, everything that was and nothing that could never have been. Mighty picture of the great tragedy without n single caption, claptrap, or otherwise. Tho men's faces alone, in their dread moments, told the tale of the happenings about them. Their very quiet has left on my mind an unforgettable impression of those bloody years And what is even more wonderful still, ts that never for a moment does the din of battle obliterate the great human love story of the earlier scenes, when Paris was a love garden 'up near the stars. Mr Hicks writes much more, of the P° e . rle3 * poetic tale. Janet Gaynor and Charles I'M rell are the world-famous Diane and Chieo, tho Duse and the Irving of the films.