Heaven Can Wait
(1943)
Surely someone can better explain The
so-called “Lubitsch Touch” all the serious critics keep talking about. I think I have some sense of
what it is watching his films (I’ve seen two, Heaven Can Wait and Trouble in Paradise. But I don’t feel I can yet articulate
the reasons why Lubitsch films deserve quite the amount of discussion and
worship they still receive—why YOU should watch them now.
I enjoyed Heaven Can
Wait. I found the Technicolor setscape dazzling
and lush in a very similar vein as Powell and Pressburger’s Tales of Hoffman and wanted to compare
the plotline to something like a shorter version of The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943).
Perhaps a more appropriate comparison thematically would be to the comedy The Importance of Being Ernest
(1952). But this film is definitely more compelling than The Importance of Being Ernest. Not
because it’s so much more exciting or less predictable or has better lines or
is more tightly wound. It is really none of those things. The film, on my first
casual viewing, seems almost uncannily restrained, almost ordinary in its
event-line. It almost seems as though I’ve already seen it before, though I
definitely have not.
But all of that being said. At the end of the film, my
emotions were touched gently but surely throughout, in a way that they were not
in so many other films of the same era. Perhaps this is something to do with
this Lubitsch Touch. Perhaps they don’t mean “touch” as in something he has
bestowed or imparted to the film in some kind of auteur way. Perhaps they mean
you, the way the film touches you. Perhaps today I am slightly more human than
I was yesterday. Maybe I should be talking about Renoir and not other
contemporary
My current opinion is if I had to choose between Renoir
and Lubitsch, I would choose Renoir. And if I had to choose between Hitchcock
and Clouzot, I would be pissed and demand to know why.
P.S. Compare these two clips from Heaven Can Wait (clip) and The Trouble With
Harry (1955) (clip).