Director Frank Borzage first transports us to a dark, ugly, seedy world of poverty and inequality in Paris. The pre-code masterpiece deals with the later-taboo topics of abuse, prostitution and atheism. The Hayes’ Code was designed to present and protect “moral decency” on film. But by showing some of the realities of life that the Hayes’ Code prohibited, 7th Heaven provides a beautiful picture of what moral decency can actually be.
Chico calls himself an atheist in one breath but blames God for his troubles in the next. He is arrogant, angry because “Bon Dieu” doesn’t give him everything he thinks he deserves, constantly reminding God that he’s a “very remarkable person.” But out of that arrogance, Chico asks the biggest question that all people people of faith struggle with, even though he doesn’t always consider himself to be a person of faith. By addressing God as “Bon Dieu,” he claims that God is good and asks the age-old-question: How can a good God let bad things happen to good people?
The movie never attempts to answer that question. Instead, it shows us how different people wrestle with the predicament in very different ways and how they grow more by asking the question than by any attempt to answer it. We see the struggle through the eyes of several characters. The story’s most important way of asking this question comes in the form of a romance. Chico is not as remarkable as he tells everyone he is, but he does do one remarkable thing. He rescues Diane, his eventual wife, from her abusive sister and from a situation that would have forced her into prostitution. The rest of the movie shows how Diane continually rescues Chico as they struggle with that spiritual question collectively and pursue their “7th heaven,” which is the ideal of God’s goodness reflected in the love of people for each other.
– Ed Bertram
- Directed by: Frank Borzage
- Produced by: William Fox Sol M. Wurtzel
- Written by: Austin Strong Benjamin Glazer Katherine Hilliker H. H. Caldwell Bernard Vorhaus
- Music by: William P. Perry Erno Rapee
- Cinematography by: Ernest Palmer Joseph A. Valentine
- Editing by:Barney Wolf
- Release Date: 1927
- Running Time: 110
- Language: Silent
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