Romantic melodrama might constitute a fleeting encounter in today’s cinema of cynicism and irony, but the genre was never better – nor more luminous and seductive – than in the films of Frank Borzage. A staunch romantic (working at Fox in the time of F.W. Murnau), Borzage took advantage of the studio’s enthusiasm for expressionist whimsy, and created enveloping, hermetic visions of transcendent love between the world wars.
In Seventh Heaven (1927), a Parisian sewer worker (played by Charles Farrell) falls in love with a slum-dwelling prostitute (the diminutive but expressive Janet Gaynor, who also stars in Murnau’s Sunrise). Persevering social judgements and a looming war, the lovers eke out their dream life in a loft overlooking the city; Borzage brilliantly fuses their emotional and physical uplift in a justly celebrated tracking shot that slowly rises from floor to floor as the lovers ascend a staircase.
Street Angel (1928) reinstates the magic: a willing prostitute (Gaynor again) escapes the law in Naples by joining the circus and she falls in love with a traveling artist (Farrell); their romantic bliss promises them joy until the law inevitably catches up. The two words of the title suggest Borzage’s peerless sense of the divine passions beating within the hearts of ordinary people, and the intensity of their feelings are crystallized by the film’s chiaroscuro lighting, thick fog, and wet, urban avenues. Gaynor’s strength and vulnerability earned her the very first Oscar for Best Actress.
Riding on the crest of their popularity, the team reunited for Lucky Star (1929), a storybook romance in which a petty thief (Gaynor) befriends a wheelchair-bound war hero (Farrell) in a visually sculpted, forested setting that rivals Sunrise in its emotional enchantment.
Lastly, Borzage’s take on Liliom (1930), based on the play that also inspired Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel about a conceited carnival barker who returns from the afterlife to redeem himself, is notable for its emphasis on the man’s lover, a woman resolutely committed to loving a flawed human being. For Borzage, it’s the conviction that matters, the magnetic force that conquers all adversity.
Fully illustrated colour booklet with newly commissioned essays and film notes
Brand new restoration.
Film Description
Features the two silent Frank Borzage films, Seventh Heaven (1927) and Street Angel (1928), both starring Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell.
Seventh Heaven is a tender love story set in pre-WWI Paris which unites the pert and angelic Janet Gaynor and the tall but not-so-rugged Charles Farrell in their initial union - their first of twelve movies in which they were to appear together. The film won three Oscars including the Best Actress award for Janet Gaynor and also the Best Director award for Frank Borzage.
