Heavenly sinner

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
German title Heavenly sinner
Original title Heaven can wait
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1943
length 108 minutes
Rod
Director Ernst Lubitsch
script Samson Raphaelson ,
Ernst Lubitsch
production Ernst Lubitsch
for 20th Century Fox
music Alfred Newman
camera Edward Cronjager
cut Dorothy Spencer
occupation

A Heavenly Sinner is a feature film from 1943. The one by director Ernst Lubitsch after the play Birthday. A picture of life in 6 chapters by László Bús-Fekete staged mixture of comedy , drama and romance with Gene Tierney and Don Ameche in the leading roles describes the life of the bon vivant Henry van Cleve.

action

The recently deceased Henry Van Cleve signs up at the point where many had wanted him to be. The bon vivant expects the reward of his turbulent life. The very courteous and polite receptionist, who is addressed as " Your Excellency ", doubts that Henry really belongs there, and lets him roll out the whole story of his life.

Henry was born into a wealthy Manhattan family in 1872 , and his relatives have pampered him since birth. As a nine-year-old boy, he discovered his attraction to girls and gave them pearls so that they could walk through the park with them. When he was 15, Henry allowed himself to be seduced by his French governess. He eventually grows up to be a young Casanova who enjoys New York nightlife to the fullest and gets involved with many showgirls. Most of the members of his stiff family are outraged, only his down-to-earth grandfather Hugo Van Cleve can understand his amorous adventures. One day Henry overhears a beautiful young woman lying to her mother on a public phone. Fascinated, he follows the young woman into a bookstore and pretends to be a salesman in order to get to know her better. Even though she is engaged, he makes her advances. Although she does like Henry, the woman quickly leaves the bookstore when she learns that he is not a salesman. A little later Henry's boring cousin Albert introduces his fiancée to the family: Martha Strable, who - as Henry is astonished to discover - is the beauty from the bookstore. Albert was Martha's first lover whom her two (quarreling) parents liked. Because she didn't want to end up as an old maid, Martha agreed to the engagement, even though she doesn't actually love Albert.

Henry quickly convinces Martha with his charm that she should marry him instead of Albert. Both of them flee from the crowd to the registry office, which outrages the entire family except for the grandfather. Henry and Martha are happily married and have a son named Jack. However, when Martha found out about Henry's affair on the eve of the tenth wedding anniversary, she packed her bags and flees to her parents in Kansas. The devastated Henry is helped by his ancient grandfather, who makes it clear to him that Martha is the love of his life. Together, Henry and the grandfather pursue Martha and finally convince her to return to Henry. Both flee a second time, much to the annoyance of Martha's parents and to the delight of the grandfather.

The years go by and Henry is now fifty years old when he visits a showgirl named Peggy Nash in her dressing room who is having an undesirable relationship with son Jack. Henry ensnares Peggy to get her away from his son, but finds that his old love tricks no longer work. That offends him very much, but Martha now knows all the more clearly that Henry is now only hers. Peggy Nash eventually receives a cash settlement from her worried father to end her relationship with Jack. Shortly after their 25th wedding anniversary, Martha dies, who, as she says, has become the happiest woman on earth through her marriage to Henry. After her death, he remains a very active and fun-loving widower who always goes out in the evening. One day after his 70th birthday, in 1942, Henry finally dies under the care of a beautiful nurse.

After Henry's life story has ended, his Excellency refuses him entry. He considers Henry's way of life to be insignificant; on the contrary, it would have made many women, especially Martha, happy. In the end he lets him go "up" where, maybe after a while, he can see Martha and his grandfather again.

background

Heaven can wait was Ernst Lubitsch's first color film and also one of the last, because until his death he only shot Cluny Brown and parts of That Lady in Ermine .

François Truffaut remarked in an essay about Lubitsch about his last films: "Like all stylization artists, Lubitsch found his way back to the way the great storytellers represented". Lubitsch himself saw Heaven can wait as one of his main productions, as a film “that had no message and no message whatsoever. The hero was a man who was only interested in living well, who was not out to accomplish anything or to do something noble ”. He was hoping the audience would find some characters lovable, and he was right. The film became a huge success and was nominated for an Oscar in the categories for Best Camera (Color), Best Director and Best Picture . Again Lubitsch knows how to seduce his audience and hold up the mirror of the voyeur to them. "Incidentally, I showed marriage in a more truthful light than it usually happens in films, where a happy marriage is all too often portrayed as a very boring and joyless cricket-at-the-stove-affair".

The downplaying portrayal of the frivolous way of life of a sympathetic sinner who in the end finds admission to heaven was, in the opinion of the church representatives, a bad example of the morality of the public. Heaven can wait also deliberately alluded to the morality of the 1940s in the USA , albeit hidden in the parody of life and morals at the turn of the century.

interpretation

Henry van Cleve is a lifelong striving, but also quite infantile about amorous adventures and his wife Martha. He gets old but does not grow up, the people around him die by disappearing between two shots. In the end he dies like an infant himself and dreams of death to the sound of a waltz with the nurse who arrives on the night shift. The love and wooing shown from the perspective of the grave, however, opens up an almost cosmic loneliness in retrospect of his life. James Harvey called the film sentimental - but this only describes the characters, not the writer's perspective. The devil praises Henry's tireless rascal. Don Ameche, the intelligent lead actor in the film, found it all terrifying: "He says that a person who has led such a wild and selfish life like this Henry van Cleve will eventually go to heaven".

Here Lubitsch describes the most elegant variant of his cheeky heroes from the Berlin film antics, he admires the great egoist who knows how to be happy and how to make people happy. Henry lives in the worst New England puritan milieu, his slimy cousin, his hate-hardened in-laws are the standards by which he must be measured and is measured by the devil. With regard to Heaven can wait, Peter Bogdanovich writes about Lubitsch in his book Hollywood : “Lubitsch had the unique ability to give weight and reverberation to the lightest material far beyond its content. From a ridiculously simple and undemanding story of the life and death of a rather insignificant man, Lubitsch makes a moving testimony to our daily superficiality and vanity, our crises and carelessness and our deep vulnerability to our own beauty. This is Lubitsch's 'Divine Comedy' and no one else has ever dealt with human weaknesses so carefully and carefully. When the film's hero dies behind a door that is naturally closed, Lubitsch's camera slowly retreats to capture a ballroom and an old waltz that the man loved sounds. - A person has died, long live the person! "

synchronization

role actor German Dubbing voice
Henry Van Cleve Don Ameche Paul Klinger
Martha Strabel Van Cleve Gene Tierney Bettina Schön
EF Strabel Eugene Pallette Walther Suessenguth
Randolph Van Cleve, Henry's father Louis Calhern Siegfried Schürenberg
Jack Van Cleve, Henry's son Andrews death Wolfgang Kieling
His Excellency the devil Laird Cregar Paul Wagner
Jasper, Strables butler Clarence Muse Alfred Balthoff

criticism

To this day, the film is rated positively by most of the critics. The lexicon of international films wrote: “A witty, fantastic film fairytale of restrained elegance and extraordinary charm, which satirizes social life and social morality at the turn of the century. A pleasure of timeless effect, especially thanks to the pointed dialogues and the excellent color dramaturgy. "The television magazine Prisma was also impressed:" The social morality at the turn of the century is ruthlessly targeted in this frivolous love comedy by Ernst Lubitsch, which is brilliantly designed in terms of color and dramaturgy. He playfully mixes fairy tales and comedy in an extremely amusing way. The work was Lubitsch's melancholy swan song for a long career full of masterpieces ... "

media

DVD

  • Heavenly sinner . Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment 2005

literature

  • László Bús-Fekete : birthday. A picture of life in 6 chapters . [Not for sale stage manuscript.] Georg Marton, Vienna, Berlin and London 1935, 105 pp.
  • Herta-Elisabeth Renk: Ernst Lubitsch. With testimonials and photo documents . Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1992, ISBN 3-499-50502-9

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ A heavenly sinner. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  2. ↑ Critique of the film at Prisma