Starring Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell
Directed by Frank Borzage

The Festival acknowledges the assistance of David Townsend and Twentieth Century Fox in the presentation of this film.

Tickets: $25/$15 concession
Film: digital presentation of restored film
Duration: 113 minutes

Live music: accompanist Mauro Colombis

Presenter:  Eddie Cockrell
Eddie Cockrell is a former programmer of the American Film Institute Theater in Washington DC, is a critic for Variety, and has written film reviews and features for The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Washington Post and indieWIRE.

As the title of this beautiful film implies, it is a delightful love story about a couple who are ‘in seventh heaven’ together – but also while apart, when World War I calls all men to arms for several years. Director Frank Borzage draws on his 14-years of experience in the film industry to create a special love story with a surreal element and spiritual quality.

This story is particularly poignant because the couple in question is a poor sewer worker and a homeless young woman, but having found love, they are blissfully happy in a world of their own in his charming little seventh floor rooftop flat. Not even the horror of war can break their spirit or change their love because the couple seems to share an invisible, spiritual bond while separated from each other.

Borzage pioneered the ‘soft focus’ look in his films, which perfectly fits the fairytale quality of this story, making it look and feel like a heavenly experience, rising above the turmoil and trouble in the world.

Not only is Borzage famous for outstanding movies of the 1940s such as A Farewell to Arms and Three Comrades, the two leading stars deserve special attention because they were “America’s favourite Lovebirds” between the years 1927 and 1934, starring together in ten more movies after the enormous success of Seventh Heaven.