"7TH HEAVEN."

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19175, 5 December 1927, Page 6

"7TH HEAVEN."

A VERY REMARKABLE PICTURE,

"7tli Heaven" will open at the Grand Theatre to-day, vhen, among a galaxy of truly great pictures ihat have beeu at that house, it will surely stand out as tho greatest. "This," says Mr Seymour Hicks, "is indeed a super picture, not ordinary con\ention bolstered up with ten thousand supers but a line 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. Tho onlooker* is not annoyed with the usual dragged in comic relief. There are none of tho usual high-faluting subtitles, and there is not one of 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. The world of- art has not enough hats to take off to Mr Frank Borzage (the director). 1 hate to say it, but this '7th Heaven' will give causo to make the thoatro proper think furiously, and indeed also Mr Borzage's screen contemporaries, for he has made ninety per ccut. of all previous film producers seem old-fashioned. Atmosphero there is; spectacle there iB; 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? None I What greater delicacy in .treatment of things that in other hands have been most indelicate? Whero such atmosphere, whether it be on the field of battle or in those periods of rapt silence when the unmarried lovers are 'looking 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 picturo there are a number, and when I realised they were coming, I had my first mental jolt. I havo seen so many. I was sorry that the simple and beautiful lovo story in which I had lost myself was to bo 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 the war, would breathe his last in a shell hole kissing the Stars and Stripes. _ But what was my surprise in '7th Heaven to sco none of these things. I Baw the war in its awful roality, everything that was ana nothing that could never have been. Mighty picture of tho great tragedy without a single caption, claptrap, or otherwise. The 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 b '°° o ?; vears And what is even more wonderful still, is that never for a moment does the din of battle obliterate the great human love story of the earlier scenes, when Puns was a love garden 'up near the stars. Mr Hicks writes much more, of the peerless acting, the pootic tnle. Janet Gaynor and nharles Farrell arc the world-famous Diane ana Chico, the Duso and tho Irving of the films.