This lovely film is an example of the movie style called "the Lubitsch touch". Ernst Lubitsch made a long series of delightfully light and funny but human comedies from the silent period into the 1940s. His films usually deal with sexual matters, but touch upon the follies and foibles of the human race in other respects (including culture, business, politics). In this film there is a classic comic section dealing with Marjorie Main and Eugene Palette, the parents of Gene Tierney (the film's heroine). Palette has made a huge fortune in the meat packing business (his symbol is a cow named "Mabel" who is the subject of an asinine jingle that leaves Charles Coburn almost in a state of shock). Main and Palette are pretty rough characters, and have disowned Tierney for abandoning her original fiancé (ALLEN JOSLYN) to run off with the far more human and likable Don Ameche. But they are not exactly the type of parents one would like to return home to visit. Indeed, most of the time they are battling each other. In CITIZEN KANE, Ruth Warwick and Orson Welles took two minutes of interconnected scenes to show how a good marriage soured. Those scenes were around the breakfast table, over a period of years. But here there is only one scene - Palette wanted to read the comic section first in the newspaper while having breakfast. But Main insists that she read it first because she got the paper first. When Palette starts protesting, Main (in retaliation) starts reading the Katzenjammer Kids (Palette's favorite comic strip) to explain how the Captain got out of a barrel with the aid of a snake. Main tells enough to get Palette to protest out loud that she's spoiling it by telling him the solution. There is a break in the action because Tierney returns to her home with Joslyn. Shortly afterward we see Palette reading the newspaper in the parlor. He looks up and says, "Why that snake did get him out of the barrel." Seldom have comic strips been used to illustrate a miserable marriage.
The film is not a guffaw fest, but has extremely funny moments, many centered on comments by Ameche's wise old grandfather (Coburn). Tierney makes a fine marriage partner and lover for Ameche, who is a turn of the century ladies' man, but not as awful a person as he thinks he is, or as many of his contemporaries have made him feel he is. Laird Cregar plays the Devil as a gentleman of discernment and understanding (as Lubitsch could imagine him). He has one marvelous moment when he sees something that momentarily diverts him from listening to Ameche, but which he reacts to with ruthlessness but understandably good taste. All I say is that it is unfortunate for the lady involved.
Not as politically satiric as NINOTCHKA but more in the nature of the simple sweetness of THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER, HEAVEN CAN WAIT is a sweet valentine to an elegant, lost New York City of 1890 - 1932. I recommend it to people who miss that elegance
The film is not a guffaw fest, but has extremely funny moments, many centered on comments by Ameche's wise old grandfather (Coburn). Tierney makes a fine marriage partner and lover for Ameche, who is a turn of the century ladies' man, but not as awful a person as he thinks he is, or as many of his contemporaries have made him feel he is. Laird Cregar plays the Devil as a gentleman of discernment and understanding (as Lubitsch could imagine him). He has one marvelous moment when he sees something that momentarily diverts him from listening to Ameche, but which he reacts to with ruthlessness but understandably good taste. All I say is that it is unfortunate for the lady involved.
Not as politically satiric as NINOTCHKA but more in the nature of the simple sweetness of THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER, HEAVEN CAN WAIT is a sweet valentine to an elegant, lost New York City of 1890 - 1932. I recommend it to people who miss that elegance