Apart from the fact that both films deal with the afterlife, there is no connection between this "Heaven Can Wait" and the 1978 Warren Beatty/Julie Christie vehicle. (Confusingly, that film was a remake of another early forties comedy, "Here Comes Mr. Jordan", which was based upon a stage play named "Heaven Can Wait". The 1943 "Heaven Can Wait" was based on a stage play entitled "Birthday").
The 1943 film opens with an elderly man named Henry van Cleve arriving in Hell, where he is greeted in person by Satan himself, referred to here as "His Excellency". Henry believes that he has led an immoral, dissolute life and that he therefore belongs in Hell. His Excellency, however, is not convinced that Henry is as wicked as he makes out, and asks him to tell his life story.
Henry, it appears, was born in New York in 1872, the son of wealthy parents. An only child, he is spoilt by his parents and grandparents and grows into an idle young man whose main interests in life are girls, girls and more girls (especially young actresses). In his twenties he elopes with the beautiful Martha Strabel, the daughter of a Kansas meat-packer and the fiancée of his stuffy, boring cousin Albert. Despite being married to a girl with the looks of Gene Tierney, Henry cannot help chasing after other women, and after ten years of marriage Martha runs back to her parents in Kansas, only for Henry to pursue her and persuade her to return. The film then leaps forward another fifteen years to the couple's silver wedding anniversary, shortly after which Martha dies of some unspecified illness. Henry, however, lives to a ripe old age, as much of a reprobate as ever, and eventually dies (fittingly enough) in the arms of a pretty young nurse. Having heard all this, His Excellency must decide whether Henry is worthy to be admitted to Hell.
Throughout his adult life, the role of Henry is played by the same actor, Don Ameche. (Two child actors play him as a boy). This was a remarkable feat, as Henry ages from a teenager to an old man in his seventies, yet Ameche (35 at the time) is able to make him seem credible at all stages of his life. (The make-up department also deserve a lot of credit for their contribution in this respect). As for Tierney (23 at the time), she was probably the most beautiful actress of the period and is absolutely radiant here, especially in the early scenes. Unfortunately, the make-up artists were less successful with her than they were with Ameche, and never really overcame the difficult problem of how to make a beautiful young woman look older. (Elizabeth Taylor faced the same problem in "Giant").Martha in her thirties looks exactly the same as she did in her twenties, and even in her fifties the only difference is that she has a few grey hairs. There are also good supporting performances by Laird Cregar as Satan, played here as an urbane, well-dressed gentleman, and from Charles Coburn as Henry's wicked old grandfather from whom he inherits his roguish tendencies. (His parents are just as dull and conventional as Albert).
The film was directed by Ernst Lubitsch, a German-born director who had emigrated to America in the 1920s, and based upon a play by a Hungarian-born playwright. It is therefore hardly surprising that it has a certain urbane Central European sophistication about it. Although the action takes place in New York, it could equally well be set in fin-de-siecle Old Vienna. (Another Old World touch is the suggestion that Henry might end up in Purgatory- a rather surprising reference to a Catholic doctrine in a film from a mainly Protestant Anglo-Saxon country). Although it is not a "sex comedy" in the sense that we would understand the term today, a comedy of manners based around marital infidelity must have seemed very daring and sophisticated in the rather puritanical 1940s. The critic Michael Wilmington described Lubitsch as "a man who was amused by sex rather than frightened of it-- and who taught a whole culture to be amused by it as well", and these words seem an apt summing-up of "Heaven Can Wait".
Today, nearly seventy years on, comedies about adultery are no longer the latest word in sophistication, and many films of this type from the forties, and even from the fifties and sixties, can seem very dated today. "Heaven Can Wait" has not entirely escaped this fate, but some decent acting and its lightness of touch mean that it holds up better than many. 7/10
The 1943 film opens with an elderly man named Henry van Cleve arriving in Hell, where he is greeted in person by Satan himself, referred to here as "His Excellency". Henry believes that he has led an immoral, dissolute life and that he therefore belongs in Hell. His Excellency, however, is not convinced that Henry is as wicked as he makes out, and asks him to tell his life story.
Henry, it appears, was born in New York in 1872, the son of wealthy parents. An only child, he is spoilt by his parents and grandparents and grows into an idle young man whose main interests in life are girls, girls and more girls (especially young actresses). In his twenties he elopes with the beautiful Martha Strabel, the daughter of a Kansas meat-packer and the fiancée of his stuffy, boring cousin Albert. Despite being married to a girl with the looks of Gene Tierney, Henry cannot help chasing after other women, and after ten years of marriage Martha runs back to her parents in Kansas, only for Henry to pursue her and persuade her to return. The film then leaps forward another fifteen years to the couple's silver wedding anniversary, shortly after which Martha dies of some unspecified illness. Henry, however, lives to a ripe old age, as much of a reprobate as ever, and eventually dies (fittingly enough) in the arms of a pretty young nurse. Having heard all this, His Excellency must decide whether Henry is worthy to be admitted to Hell.
Throughout his adult life, the role of Henry is played by the same actor, Don Ameche. (Two child actors play him as a boy). This was a remarkable feat, as Henry ages from a teenager to an old man in his seventies, yet Ameche (35 at the time) is able to make him seem credible at all stages of his life. (The make-up department also deserve a lot of credit for their contribution in this respect). As for Tierney (23 at the time), she was probably the most beautiful actress of the period and is absolutely radiant here, especially in the early scenes. Unfortunately, the make-up artists were less successful with her than they were with Ameche, and never really overcame the difficult problem of how to make a beautiful young woman look older. (Elizabeth Taylor faced the same problem in "Giant").Martha in her thirties looks exactly the same as she did in her twenties, and even in her fifties the only difference is that she has a few grey hairs. There are also good supporting performances by Laird Cregar as Satan, played here as an urbane, well-dressed gentleman, and from Charles Coburn as Henry's wicked old grandfather from whom he inherits his roguish tendencies. (His parents are just as dull and conventional as Albert).
The film was directed by Ernst Lubitsch, a German-born director who had emigrated to America in the 1920s, and based upon a play by a Hungarian-born playwright. It is therefore hardly surprising that it has a certain urbane Central European sophistication about it. Although the action takes place in New York, it could equally well be set in fin-de-siecle Old Vienna. (Another Old World touch is the suggestion that Henry might end up in Purgatory- a rather surprising reference to a Catholic doctrine in a film from a mainly Protestant Anglo-Saxon country). Although it is not a "sex comedy" in the sense that we would understand the term today, a comedy of manners based around marital infidelity must have seemed very daring and sophisticated in the rather puritanical 1940s. The critic Michael Wilmington described Lubitsch as "a man who was amused by sex rather than frightened of it-- and who taught a whole culture to be amused by it as well", and these words seem an apt summing-up of "Heaven Can Wait".
Today, nearly seventy years on, comedies about adultery are no longer the latest word in sophistication, and many films of this type from the forties, and even from the fifties and sixties, can seem very dated today. "Heaven Can Wait" has not entirely escaped this fate, but some decent acting and its lightness of touch mean that it holds up better than many. 7/10