Romancefest 3: Sadiefest - Heaven Can Wait

HEAVEN CAN WAIT starts with an interesting premise – a recently deceased rich playboy (Don Ameche) assumes he’s destined to go to hell, so he voluntarily shows up to surrender himself to the devil (Laird Cregar). The devil, however, has different plans, as he asks Ameche to elaborate on exactly why automatically assumes he’s sentenced to eternal damnation by telling him his life story.

Turns out Ameche’s biggest crimes were that he was a spoiled only child of privilege, and that he had an insatiable appetite for women, which eventually made his 25 year marriage to the great love of his life (Gene Tierney) more difficult than it otherwise had to be.

To the movie’s credit, it fully exploits this premise, carefully going over the facts of the case of Ameche’s life from birth until death, not unlike more modern pictures like ANNIE HALL – this film is uniquely introspective for a movie from the early 40s. Perhaps this is because the director, Ernst Lubitsch, who was going through a divorce at the time of the film’s production, saw something personal in it.

Lubitsch, like Preston Sturges, is a director I’ve been meaning to bone up on for years but have been lazy about, for whatever reason. Even since I saw TO BE OR NOT TO BE years ago, I’ve thought, I need to check this guy out. So, I’m glad I finally have another Lubitsch under my belt.

Ameche and Tierney are great as the central married couple, and their relationship is believable and probably not quite as dated as most people would like to believe. Ameche resists the temptation to lay it on too thick as the playboy type, and mostly just acts like a decent (if impulsive) guy. Tierney’s beauty and grace makes it easily clear why Ameche would be fall so easily and deeply in love with her, and both actors do a credible job of playing their characters over several decades of life, in sickness and in health.

Like most films of the classic Hollywood era, HEAVEN CAN WAIT benefits from a stellar supporting cast including Charles Coburn as Ameche’s sympathetic and conspiratorial grandfather and Marjorie Main and Eugene Pallette as Tierney’s unhappily married parents who love to hate each other. Laird Cregar, who I mentioned earlier, also turns in a memorable performance as an uncharacteristically sympathetic lord of the underworld.

I have to admit, I’m not 100% sure I understand the point this movie is trying to make, if any. After all, if you take the events of the movie literally and look at them objectively, Ameche was a guy who did commit a few sins, at the expense of some people he purported to love. But, I guess maybe that gets to the point of the film, which is that you can’t really look at anyone literally and objectively because you’ll always have your own filter, or their filter, or someone else’s filter, obscuring the so-called truth, whatever that is.

I guess, if anything, it’s a comforting notion that even if you damn yourself to hell with your own guilty conscience, Satan himself might take pity on you.