Heaven Can Wait

Year: 1943

Grade: B+

Country: USA

Director: Lubitsch

Review

lubitsch film that i finally got around to seeing. can’t remember much about the remake with warren beatty, but i remember it being a fairly harmless little comedy. this, though, is funny and thoughtful and dark all rolled into one. lubitsch is climbing up the ladder for me. if i were as dedicated as i was before i’d watch 4-5 of his films in the next month to really get a grip on his style, but that’s difficult for me to do these days. i wish they made comedies like this these days. so-called thoughtful comedies these days are films like in the loop which produce no laughs are little entertainment value. a film like this is both high and low art. it is like the simpsons in its heyday. there is the high brow, literary comedy for the so-called intellectuals and then there’s the more low brow stuff. meanwhile there is a plot that both tells an engaging story and teaches a lesson. we’re lucky these days when we get a film like hangover which tells an engaging story and has a solid amount of low brow humor. there’s nothing wrong with that, but it would be nice if the occasional film was produced that had it all.

i’m not saying this is the greatest of all comedies, but it’s a solid and fun film that engages the mind on more than one level and i appreciate that and would like to see more of it.