everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

"Seventh Heaven," Frank Borzage's poetic romantic melodrama from 1927, was the last of the three films nominated for the first Best Picture Oscar that I have now finished viewing (the other two being Lewis Milestone's "The Racket" and William A. Wellman's "Wings"). It's a sweet little movie about a meek waif (Janet Gaynor) who meets cute with a macho street cleaner (Charles Farrell) and then proceeds to fall in love with him, and he with her, while living together as a fake husband and wife in order to fool the authorities and prevent Gaynor from going to jail (that's another story, and is disposed of within the film's first 20 minutes or so). From there, the film transitions into full-blown melodrama as Farrell goes off to war and Gaynor waits stoically for him to return.This all would be enough to make one gag, if someone other than Borzage had directed it. He had a knack for taking the most saccharine subject matter and handling it with utmost delicacy; as a result, you're utterly charmed and swept up in the film's romanticism even as your head tells you you should be rolling your eyes. It also helps that Farrell and especially Gaynor were very good actors, and they make the characters believable while keeping the rampant sentimentality at bay.Borzage won the first Best Director Oscar for his work, and Gaynor was Oscar's first Best Actress, winning for this and two other films, "Street Angel" and "Sunrise," back when Oscars were given for entire bodies of work over a year and not for one specific film. Writer Benjamin Glazer completed the film's triplicate wins by taking home the first Oscar for Writing (Adaptation), before a screenplay award even existed."Seventh Heaven" was passed over in the Best Picture category for "Wings," and it also lost Art Direction (for Harry Oliver's impressive Parisian loft and WWI battlefield sets), but with five nominations it emerged as the most nominated film in Oscar's debut year.Grade: A

SEVENTH HEAVEN, premiered May 6th of 1927, Produced by William Fox and distributed by Goldwyn Pictures.Here's an actual TRIVIA Pursuit question: Who preceded Judy Garland in the title role of the first film version of A Star Is Born? She is also the answer to another Trivial Pursuit question: who was the winner of the very first Academy Award as Best Actress, at the inaugural 1927-28 ceremony? And if that does not recommend the film enough to you, SEVENTH HEAVEN also received the most nominations of any film at the first Academy Awards ceremony, with five.The movie is a romance starring Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell. Frank Borzage won the first Academy Award for Best Director and Benjamin Glazer won the first Oscar for Best Writing which was based on the play adaptation from the novel by Benjamin Harrison.Seventh Heaven is the 13th highest grossing silent film in cinema history, taking in more than $2.5 million at the box office in 1927.Seventh Heaven featured the song "Diane" by Erno Rapee and Lew Pollack, who wrote the song specifically for the film.A comparatively unknown remake of Seventh Heaven was produced as a sound film in 1937, starring Simone Simon, James Stewart, Jean Hersholt, and Gregory Ratoff, with Henry King directing.Some of you may recognize character actor George E. Stone in the beginning who usually played small gangsters in comic relief here playing a character called, "Sewer rat." Janet Gaynor with her big-eyed, small doll's face was a five foot tall actress known for her cleft chin and very expressive eyes. Six foot two, Charles Farrell could fill a room with his optimism and hope. Frank Borzage, a former actor directs with an intuitive sense of emotional temperature; he keeps things boiling under the surface while the screen only registers a simmer.Based on a long-running stage success and wildly popular upon its first release, SEVENTH HEAVEN is probably Frank Borzage's most famous film, the one where all his principles of mystical romance come together most distinctively. This exquisite tale of romance between street waif Diane (played by Janet Gaynor) and Paris sewage worker Chico (played by Charles Farrell) stresses the redemptive side of couplehood so persuasively that otherworldly connotations, like the strong ray of light that literally shines down on them after their various trials, seem only fair and natural. Borzage ennobles their poverty-stricken lives to such an extent that even the cruelties of war don't stand a chance when they are working against it together. It's the perfect exchange, lovers drawing strength from one another and ascending onto a different, metaphysical plane—you feel they could fly off the rooftops if they wanted to. Borzage patiently catches the smallest details of love, most memorably in the scene where Diane, alone in their garret, picks up Chico's coat and strokes it tenderly as if it were him. When the six-foot-two-inch Farrell kisses Gaynor passionately and holds her tiny five-foot frame up in the air, they truly look like a couple blessed by a winged divinity, with the space around them seemingly vibrating with some kind of spiritual presence. Watching them together in the same shot is an uncanny experience, one not easy to explain.His gift for transforming the mundane, commonplace world into something beautiful and dreamlike made the films of Frank Borzage extraordinary. 7th Heaven, and the heartbreaking performance of its star Janet Gaynor, virtually defined not only the Borzage style, but also Gaynor's screen image and to an even greater extent, romantic love in Hollywood. The story of a Paris waif, saved by a sewer worker who pities her, was so wildly successful Fox spent years trying to equal it. Nothing ever did. The pairing of Gaynor with handsome leading man Charles Farrell presented a couple so attractive, likable and with such genuine chemistry, the two would go on to appear in 12 films together, including two more with Borzage.Borzage's use of beautiful set design: the girls' decrepit home, the ancient cobblestone streets, Chico's rooftop garret and even the sewer, evoke an atmosphere that is both unreal and timeless. The ravishing sets created by Harry Oliver, whom Borzage used many times, add to the rich fairy-tale mood of a rather simple story, giving the characters an iconic quality.The acting may be a bit direct but in silent films they had to communicate more visually and sometimes it seemed over the top, but keep watching their eyes and you'll never loose the focus of the story. Film critic and historian Andrew Sarris described SEVENTH HEAVEN'S magic as "Borzage's commitment to love over probability." To some it's high schmaltz, really fever-pitched melodrama, and the plot relies on a huge number of coincidences. But it all works beautifully, through a perfect combination of acting, directing, and photography, not to mention the incredible lighting and set design. This is one of the great silent movies, and one of the great screen romances. Janet Gaynor had quite a year in 1927, turning in fantastic performances in this, as well as F. W. Murnau's Sunrise.

This love story is so much a product of its' era, a time of innocence and charm. The leads, Gaynor and Farrell, are simply perfect as the lovers who are parted by World War I. Janet Gaynor is beautiful and Charles Farrell is handsome. SEVENTH HEAVEN has it all: prostitution, romance, war, a sadistic whipping, and religion. It is melodramatic, to be sure, but this is part of the charm. It is a winner of multiple 1st Academy Awards, and deserves to be seen on DVD in a Fox release. Perhaps if we wrote to Fox Home Entertainment. They allowed that abysmal tape of SEVENTH HEAVEN to be circulated by Critics Choice. It's time to correct a bad judgment.

A beautiful melodrama, which, at its best, nears Sunrise. Janet Gaynor starred in both of them, and one the first Best Actress Oscar for her work in those two films. She plays a destitute Parisian girl kicked out of her home by her father. When a police officer attempts to arrest her, a sewer worker who has just been promoted to a street cleaner (Charles Farrell) selflessly claims that she is his wife. The two have to uphold this charade for a few days, but, by the end, they are in love. By the time they realize this and get married, though, WWI has begun and the men are off to war. The first half, maybe more, is the romantic part, and it is wonderful. Some of the best filmmaking around, and a couple of scenes that are just gorgeous. I will never forget sweet Janet Gaynor putting Farrell's coat on the back of a chair and then, sitting in that chair, she puts the coat's arms around her body. The second half, the war half, is very good, but it pulls down the magical romance into reality. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, I suppose, no matter how much I was enjoying that first half. It's a good war film, at least the equal of Wings. The battle sequences are well produced and harrowing. Meanwhile, Gaynor faces the no-longer harmless flirtations of a Colonel. The direction is always fantastic. The visual and narrative motif of altitude is very well done, with Farrell beginning in the sewers and, a bit later, he ascends to the stars in his tall apartment building. Seventh Heaven might have been a masterpiece, but it completely crumbles by the end. The end should have written itself. The end of the war should have been the sign that Farrell had not abandoned Gaynor. Unfortunately, we have to deal with an entirely tacked-on ending. It can't ruin the film, of course. 9/10.