Heaven Can Wait (Criterion Collection) | 
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Director: Ernst Lubitsch
Actors: Gene Tierney, Don Ameche, Charles Coburn, Marjorie Main, Laird Cregar
Studio: Criterion
Category: DVD
List Price: $29.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  29 reviews
Sales Rank: 26512
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dvd-video, Full Screen, Special Edition, Subtitled, Ntsc
Languages: English (Subtitled), English (Original Language), French (Original Language)
Rating: Unrated
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 112
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
MPN: DCC1613D
ISBN: 1559409614
UPC: 715515016322
EAN: 9781559409612
ASIN: B00092ZLEE
Theatrical Release Date: August 11, 1943
Release Date: June 14, 2005
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com essential video
The last masterwork by Ernst Lubitsch--whose other gems include Trouble in Paradise, Lady Windermere's Fan, Ninotchka, and The Shop Around the Corner--Heaven Can Wait was nominated for best picture and director Oscars in its day but largely neglected thereafter. Partly it's a matter of no one expecting a 1943 Fox movie featuring Don Ameche, the star of so many bland Technicolor musicals at that studio, to be a comedy of rare loveliness. Also, there's the confusion engendered by the existence of another film with the same title: the 1978 Warren Beatty movie that was the remake of a classic '40s comedy-fantasy--but Here Comes Mr. Jordan, not Heaven Can Wait. It's high time to get our priorities straight. Following his demise, the aristocratic Henry Van Cleve (Ameche), having no hope of Paradise, betakes himself "where all his life so many people had told him to go." Hell, or at least its antechamber, would appear to be a luxury hotel in neoclassical mode, and--this is a Lubitsch movie, after all--His Satanic Excellency (Laird Cregar) is a perfect gentleman and the most gracious of hosts. To establish his credentials for spending eternity there, Henry begins to narrate a life which, though lacking any notable crimes, "has been one continuous misdemeanor." Centered in a Fifth Avenue mansion left over from 19th-century New York, the film is Lubitsch and writing partner Samson Raphaelson's valentine to "an age that has vanished, when it was possible to live for the charm of living." Spanning more than half a century, it chronicles the high points of Henry's life so delicately that--in a variation on the strategies of Lubitsch-Raphaelson's risque '30s classics--it leaves some of them entirely offscreen, their emotional impact measured by what the characters feel and say about them afterward. We'll leave it to you to find out what they are. Suffice it to say that Ameche and Gene Tierney--as Martha, the love of Henry's life--give performances far subtler than anything else in their Fox contract-player careers, and there are sublime opportunities for those peerless character actors Charles Coburn, Eugene Pallette, and Marjorie Main. --Richard T. Jameson
Description
Newly deceased playboy Henry Van Cleve (Don Ameche) presents himself to the outer offices of Hades where he asks a bemused Satan for permission to enter the gates of Hell. Though the Devil doubts Henry's sins will qualify him for eternal damnation, Henry proceeds to recount a lifetime spent wooing and pursuing women. Nominated for Academy Awards for Best Picture and Director, Heaven Can Wait is an enduring classic that showcases director Ernst Lubitsch's trademark blend of wit, urbanity, and grace.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 24 more reviews...
 what happened anyways? February 4, 2008
0 out of 4 found this review helpful
Hmmm. This movie could have been very cute, and has several fine and comical parts. Unfortunately, too many things don't follow or are clumsily explained, not too mention it should be a good 15 minutes shorter. For me, it would have been a much better story if all of Ameche's so called "sins" were only misunderstandings/misperceptions
from his squareish family (as many seem to be). I was fully expecting them to explained as such by the devil himself at the end, and that he would fully realize his fine character as the devil boots him to heaven.
But if i'm supposed to understand that he really sinned, why is he going to heaven, and what sense does that make alongside his doting relation to his wife? I think this movie is either generally misunderstood or not fully realized, or worse both.
 A great old movie September 27, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This movie was a delight to find! I enjoyed it when I was a teenager and never forgot it. A wonderful movie. I highly recommend it!
Heaven Can Wait June 22, 2007
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
A deft, subtly brilliant romantic comedy by the great Lubitsch, "Heaven" examines a privileged man whose boyish love of courtship colors his devotion to his wife, making his life "one continuous misdemeanor." Penned by the gifted Samson Raphaelson and shot in lavish Technicolor, "Heaven" marries urbane wit and bittersweet themes about youth and aging, folly and regret. Ameche and Tierney are a handsome, appealing pair from their first meeting in a bookshop, while Charles Coburn (as scampish Grandpa Hugo) and Allyn Joslyn (as Henry's strait-laced cousin Albert) round out a fabulous supporting cast. Delicate, charming, and almost effortlessly moving.
Great story with great actors April 12, 2007
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
Extremely well done story about married people in the 1900s. If you don't cry at the end you're really tough. I recommend this movie to anyone who likes people.
A witty, humane, thoughtful movie directed by Ernst Lubitsch and written by Samson Raphaelson August 5, 2006
11 out of 12 found this review helpful
"As Henry Van Cleve's soul passed over The Great Divide, he realized that it was extremely unlikely that his next stop could be Heaven. And so, philosophically, he presented himself where innumerable people had so often told him to go."
Henry (Don Ameche) is greeted courteously by His Excellency (Laird Cregar). "I presume your funeral was satisfactory?" the devil asks. "Well...there was a lot of crying," Henry says, "so I believe everybody had a good time." His Excellency explains that while he will consider Henry's request, there must be good reasons to avoid going Up There. "If you meet our requirements, we'll be only too glad to accommodate you. Would you be kind enough to mention, for instance, some outstanding crime you've committed " "Crime...crime...I'm afraid I can't think of any," Henry says. "But I can safely say my whole life was one continuous misdemeanor."
Heaven Can Wait is the witty, nostalgic, gentle and surprisingly thoughtful tale of Henry Van Cleve, philanderer, wealthy lay-about and a man far from noble. Under Ernst Lubitsch's direction and with Samson Raphaelson's screenplay, Heaven Can Wait is, as critic Andrew Sarris says, "a hidden masterpiece."
His Excellency is intrigued and asks Henry to tell him his story. Henry believes that he can do this only through the women in his life, and, in one linear flashback, he does, starting as a babe in a bassinet. Henry loves women, he loves the pursuit, he loves the pleasures of the chase, the theater, the champagne, the supper clubs. He's spoiled, he's optimistic, he's endlessly inventive in finding ways out of being discovered. He may be innocently selfish, but it's in an almost childlike way. "Oh, Henry," his wife, Martha (Gene Tierney), says to him after being exasperated once too often, "I know your every move. I know your outraged indignation. I know the poor weeping little boy. I know the misunderstood, strong, silent man, the worn-out lion who is too proud to explain what happened in the jungle last night."
Henry had eloped with Martha the day he met her, under the nose of her fiance, his cousin Albert (Allyn Joslyn), a straight-laced lawyer who believes "marriage isn't a series of thrills. Marriage is a peaceful, well-balanced adjustment of two right-thinking people." Henry loves Martha deeply, but can't resist a beautiful face or a well-turned leg. Even as a widower, with a grown son, his old habits remain a part of his character. Yet he is so likeable and charming, Henry Van Cleve rarely hurts anyone.
After listening to Henry's story and despite all of Henry's tales of waywardness, His Excellency sends him on his way...but in an elevator going up, not down. He tells Henry, you'll find many people up there who love you and have been waiting for you. They will intercede for you...because despite everything you made people very happy.
This is a delightful movie that must have seemed either a relief or irrelevant to it's time. It was made in 1943 and was popular, yet it ostensibly is about nothing much at all. The setting is the 1870's through the start of the 1940's. There is no reference to any outside forces in Henry's life, no World War I, no Great Depression, no rise of fascism, no moral messages. Yet as the movie goes on we meet characters we come to either find amusing or to like, or both, and they disappear from the screen. Their time has passed and, out of sight, they've died while Henry's story continues. I was left, almost without realizing it, feeling optimistic and a little sad. Life does pass us by, and it's best savored by enjoying life without damaging others.
Among these characters are Henry's grandfather (Charles Coburn), irascible and secretly (and not so secretly) envious of Henry's outlook on life; Henry's father and mother, played by Louis Calhern and Spring Byington, obliviously stern and clueless and loving and clueless, respectively; and Mabel's parents from Kansas, played by Eugene Pallette and Marjorie Main, who have a great Sunday breakfast scene battling over the comic pages while their butler is the intermediary. Laird Cregar, only 29 when he made this movie and dead little more than a year later, brings great, amused authority to the role of His Excellency. Gene Tierney with her overbite was never more luscious. She did a skilled job as Mabel, loving Henry, understanding of his ways but only willing up to a point to be tolerant. The movie, however, is Don Ameche's. He might have been a bland actor, but he is just about perfect as Henry Van Cleve, well-intentioned, charming, constantly tempted and often frustrated.
The movie seems to me to be just about a perfect collaboration between director Lubitsch and writer Raphaelson. They had collaborated earlier on two other great movies, the incomparable Trouble in Paradise and The Shop Around the Corner. Trouble in Paradise has one of the most amusing screenplays you can find, and Lubitsch brought to it all the urbanity and style he was known for. If you could choose only one Lubitsch movie to own, I'd unhesitatingly say to make it Trouble in Paradise. But I think Heaven Can Wait would be second choice.
The Criterion DVD features a sumptuous picture transfer with rich color. The extras include a discussion of the film by movie critics Andrew Sarris and Molly Haskell and an interview with Raphaelson by Bill Moyers. The case has an informative brochure with an essay about Lubitsch and the film.
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