A triple bill of Hollywood’s prototypal producer-director Frank Borzage, who is the first director nabbing two Oscars for Best Director honor, one for 7TH HEAVEN. Although there were two trophies for directors in the very first year of the Academy Awards, Borzage won in directing Dramatic Picture and Lewis Milestone won in directing Comedy Picture for TWO ARABIAN KNIGHTS, 1927, which was a one-off thing. And 4 years later, Borzage propitiously copped another golden statuette for BAD GIRL.Borzage’s camera begins to move both horizontally and vertically (that stories-spanning shot must’ve been a revelation at then!) in his WWI tearjerker 7TH HEAVEN, a thrice Oscar-winning picture (Janet Gaynor reaped the very first Best Actress award for her collective achievement in this film, Murnau’s SUNRISE and STREET ANGEL, Borzage’s follow-up to 7TH HEAVEN), and kick-starts the appealing pairing of Gaynor and Charles Farrell, they would eventually make 12 pictures together.Also worth citing is that some rudimentary sound effects are experimented in this largely silent film, including a theme song titled “Diane”. 7TH HEAVEN is a gutter-dwelling romantic union between an atheist sewer cleaner turned street sweeper Chico (Farrell, a strapping stripling) and Diane (a waif-like Gaynor sparkles with elfin charm on top of her bent for staggering pathos), a piteous girl abused by her alcoholic sister Nana (Brockwell, a full-boded incarnation of vileness). It is about how a sensitive girl gets smitten by her ebullient knight in shining armor and what does it take to make him realize his reciprocal feelings for her. In Borzage’s conception, a proletariat love isn’t a coup de foudre, it gutters, simmers, even wavers, only attains its wholeness through a rite of passage, here actualized by the accursed WWI, and an undimmed conviction of faith, where they can truly be united by an unalloyed mutual love that is worth living for.Borzage’s innovations of his craft bulk large in 7TH HEAVEN. Besides the camera’s new-gained mobility, the striking compositions from a manhole or a staircase, the full-scale frontline hell-mouth and massive movements that are teeming with people, Diane in her wedding dress resembling a divine ascension, and Chico and Diane’s final embrace enlightened by a chink of light, these are all evidences that attest Borzage is a meritorious winner to receive his laurels.referential entries: J.B.L. Noel’s THE EPIC OF EVEREST (1924, 7.5/10); F.W. Murnau’s FINANCES OF THE GRAND DUKE (1924, 6.3/10); Elia Kazan’s A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN (1945, 8.3/10); F.W. Murnau’s SUNRISE (1927, 9.0/10).。

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