“Seventh Heaven-"

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 200, 12 November 1927, Page 23 (Supplement)

“Seventh Heaven - "

Masterpiece of Screen “It is Perfect!" Says Seymour Hicks THE greatest praise one could give this piece of work would be to say that to attempt to criticise it would be the gravest impertinence, and that to endeavour to find words to enthuse about it would leave the writer seeking adjectives. It is perfect!” This paragraph was not conceived in “Seventh Heaven’s” publicity department. It was written by Seymour Hicks, who is as nimble with his pen as he is versatile with liis face. Therefore, it deserves close attention. The picture has been secured for Auckland.

This is indeed a super-picture, not ordinary convention bolstered up with ten thousand supers hurling cardboard stones from the ramparts of century-hidden Babylonian cities, but a tine moving 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 world of art has not enough ha ts to take off to Mr. Frank Borzage. I hate to sav it. but this “Seventh Heaven” will give cause to make the theatre proper think furiously, and indeed. also Mr. Borzage’s screen contemporaries, for in this picture he has made 90 per cent, of all previous film producers seem old-fashioned. Atmosphere there Spectacle there is. TEARS AND LAUGHTER Tears there are and natural laughter. And better than this, even, shining out above them all brilliant simplicity*. Could there be any greater achievement than this? What

gentler love scenes have,we ever seen? None! What greater delicacy in treatment of things which 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 of the unmarried lovers “looking upward” always. as he has made them, toward the God that one doubted, and both came to know? The actors are actors, and you must take them or leave them at that, and in this glorious piece of artistry there is not one character, from the two girls at the munition bench, seen only for a minute, who by a look convey that before the war their mid-day was probably midnight, to the central figures of the story, or a movement that the most critical producer’s eye could find anything for but the most profound admiration. The old taxi man of Albert Gran is a slum aristocrat of Paris in excelsis, a garlic-smelling drinker from the bottle, a part easy to exaggerate, but never overdone. Then there is David Butler as Gobin. a mighty difficult part. Watch him as he sits by his wife's bedside; the woman who is about to become a mother; look at his poor ugly face and watch the lips that hardly dare say farewell as the bugle calls him from tile street below to join his regiment. GRIMNESS OF WAR The very commonplace of the things he does brings the grimness of what war means to his audience more than the rumbling of a thousand cannon, or the tramp of infantry marching into the unknown. Where is the man who calls himself one whose cheeks will not be drenched with tears at this exquisitely played Chico is played by Charles Farrell. I think it would be better to say is , “lived” by Charles Farrell. ‘‘You are a great actor, and it is grand to be able to doff one’s cap to the name of Farrell. Coupled with you is Janet Gaynor, your Diane. The : world’s Diane. What a performance! You pocket Duse in her gentler moods! It is impossible to find words to .Jhank you for the compelling pathos of a j performance that has driven all otherof its kind into oblivion.” Frank Barzage has taken his play- : ers into a real "Seventh Heaven,” and he will take vast audiences there with Ihem.