The Oscar Project

7^th Heaven (1927)

A Fox Film Corporation Film. Distributed by Fox Film Corporation.

7^th Heaven really swept up at the first Oscars. It was nominated for the most awards, and won three out of five of them. It’s interesting, because the film is very much a romance, with any other genre really sitting on the bench. That’s not to say it isn’t a great film, because it is.

Diane (Janet Gaynor) and her sister are prostitutes, living in a slum-like apartment in an unnamed city. After an incident goes pear-shaped with a wealthy relative, Diane’s tyrannical sister tries to kill her. Diane is rescued by Chico, a sewer-worker who dreams of becoming a street cleaner. He takes her in, and, after being mistaken for a couple and Chico receiving a promotion as a result, the pair decide to live together to reap the benefits of their fake marriage – one being Diane’s assumed protection, and the second being Chico’s new job. In true cinematic conventions, here begins a pretty sweet love story as the two fall for each other in spite of social standing, war and tragedy.

The film is wonderfully directed by Frank Borzage, and the cinematography is really world-building and all-encompassing (keep an eye out for some of the staircase scenes and the rooftop one early in the film – at the risk of sounding horribly cliché, both are visual feasts). Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell are kind of glorious together as Diane and Chico. The chemistry is tangible and when they fall in love, you believe it, which is a feat for a film in any age. Plus, as a couple aesthetically, they look great (I mean, really, speaking of visual feasts).

Farrell is strong as Chico too – he walks a fine line between charming and obnoxious, but always manages to fall on the best side of it. That said, Gaynor is the star of this film, as she is in Sunrise – she builds a character that’s blossoming under Chico’s kindness. Her fragility at the start of the film, a battered woman, is so beautifully portrayed, which makes her strength and her growth throughout the narrative a joy to watch and to be a part of.

7^th Heaven probably isn’t for everyone – it’s heavily romantic, even though the First World War features greatly towards the end. It is though a beautiful piece of cinema, and very character-oriented, and, actually, very much about female strength and growth, which isn’t something regularly featured in late twenties cinema.

Rating: 8 / 10

Director: Frank Borzage

Writers: Austin Strong, Benjamin Glazer

Cast: Janet Gaynor, Charles Farrell & Ben Bard

Nominations: Outstanding Picture, Production, Best Director, Dramatic Picture (won), Best Actress in a Leading Role (won), Best Writing, Adapted Story (won), Best Art Direction

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)

A Fox Film Corporation Film. Distributed by  Fox Film Corporation.

Largely thought to be the greatest silent film ever made, Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans is a masterwork of cinema. It relies almost entirely on the visual and uses this to produce a beautiful work of expressionism. Ultimately a story of redemption, the film focuses on a country man who, after becoming infatuated with a woman from the city, intends to murder his wife. The husband, played by George O’Brien, realises his error, but only after the first attempt on his wife’s life.

The story itself is pretty melodramatic, but director F.W. Murnau does a wonderful job offsetting that by infusing the film with a real undercurrent of malice. There’s an anger to it from the start, a lot of that coming from the city woman, and it’s a representation of cinema generally on how this film shapes your mood. You feel for both man and wife – you feel his rage and her betrayal and then the tenderness of the relearned love. O’Brien’s grief towards the end swinging back around to a newly-directed malice, bringing the film to a great narrative cycle.

This is helped in part to some pretty exceptional performances. Janet Gaynor and O’Brien between them are given no lines of dialogue at all, so there’s a lot riding on the expression within their faces and movements, and both do sterling jobs of this. . Gaynor in particular gives a wonderfully harrowed and broken performance as the wife. Margaret Livingston too is strong as the manipulative and deceitful city woman, and the way she moves is so interesting – almost like a huntsman spider, and the implications of that alone is pretty wonderful.

That being said, the hero of Sunrise is the cinematography. Visually, this film is sublime.  The landscape shots and the use of shadow is as close to flawless as you can get with cinema, and the mobility of the camera work lends not to jerky hand-held shots, but instead to beautiful tracking of characters. Not only that, but the layering to define motive and express character thought is so clever and interesting and lends so much to the narrative and development of character. See what I mean at the caps below.

All in all, it’s pretty hard to fault this film, and it’s one that everyone should watch if they get the chance.

Rating: 10 / 10

Director: F.W. Murnau

Writers: Herman Suderman, Carl Mayer

Cast: George O’Brien, Janet Gaynor & Margaret Livingston

Nominations: Unique & Artistic Production (winner), Best Actress in a Leading Role (winner), Cinematography (winner), Art Direction