Unbelievably daft for this late period of Lubtisch. It's a good thing everything's so darn pleasing to the eye.

Zzzzzzz.

For a movie about a man at the gates of hell, this needed to be much darker and it should have dealt with some heftier themes. The premise did have potential, had Lubitch hit the right notes. His film is not really funny, nor very touching. Bittersweet might seem the way to go but if you don't deliver the sweetness, it all just ends up being slightly depressing - that is, if we cared.

The parts at the gates at hell were the most interesting, so it's a shame that they only book-ended the film.

My personal favorite of Lubitsch films, perhaps because instead of "touches," he here gives us his whole philosophy: a tolerance of all human follies (particularly the sexual) provided the people who are responsible for them are gentle, and loving and kind. Gene Tierney is even more beautiful than usual (if that's possible), Don Ameche is ten times better than he has a right to be, and Laird Cregar is the best Lucifer ever!

Is it a bit too stiff upper-lip? Well, yeah. But a knockout premise and some pretty fair romance carry it through, and I was genuinely invested in Cleve's dalliances. It doesn't hurt that Gene Tierney looks stunningly gorgeous, granted. The humor is often dated, but just as often charming, and makes this very enjoyable.

I always hate to dismiss a film as "dated" since what is a movie supposed to be about other than the time in which it's from. But here Lubitch doesn't feel so much like he's pushing up against the code as much as sitting comfortably within it's box and winking occasionally. A character who is supposed to be philandering in 1943 comes off as a strictly harmless (even admirable) family man in 2011.

#967

Got to admit that the whole heaven and hell thing was sort of silly and unnecessary, but I loved the rest of the movie immensively. Similar in storytelling and feel to It's a Wonderful Life (perhaps my favorite movie of all time). Charles Coburn is highly entertaining as the grandfather.

Lubitsch's use of ellipsis is intelligent to the point of being profound: it really is like grasping at the wind of life to catch only the most important bits. Still, I get the distinct impression that Lubitsch is looking back on his own life - and his distinct gender politics, marrying love and polygamy - and hoping Satan is just a heck of a nice fella. There is a very peculiar melancholy there, creating a different level of dark comedy. And I truly hope that worked out for him, really.

You can really feel the friction here between Lubitsch's suggestive, relatively liberal kind of comedy, and the restrictive Hays Code conventions of the day. It's a late nineteenth century period piece to boot, so the strict family values are a given, but they don't necessarily prevail, and the skirt-chasing protagonist is "forgiven" for defying them. Bush-Fekete and Raphaelson's script qualifies as one of the better ones directed by Lubitsch.

930

Very funny and charming motion picture. Also, it's in the public domain and you can download it off www.archive.org, so you have no excuse for not seeing it :-)

A very enjoyable comedy. The interplay between Ameche and Tierney works pretty well and the story as a whole flows quite nicely. There's an underlying sarcastic tone to the film which works quite well and while it's never really a dark comedy it's not quite a lighthearted affair either.

Strictly dullsville. It's a limp premise, and the comedy has no spark to it. A few good lines come from the grandfather character, but otherwise all the jokes fall flat. Ameche is astoundingly bland, and Tierney doesn't radiate enough charisma to make up for him.

Good film.

Solid effort from Lubitsch. Gentle touches throughout. It takes a while to get going, but once Tierney shows up, it just gets better and better. The use of space is always imaginative, with a depth to many of the shots that visually adds layers to the film. The story is done in a way that highlights the comic elements, but that doesn't let you forget the darker threads running through it.

944