Producer-director Ernst Lubitsch brings his famed stylish and witty touch to this much-admired fantasy comedy tale of a 19th-century Casanova called Henry Van Cleve (Don Ameche), who catches the lovely Martha Strabel Van Cleve (Gene Tierney), but is an old roué with a wandering eye.
Lubitsch’s elegant and charming 1943 classic starts with Ameche’s Van Cleve asking for membership to Hell, then we hear the story of his life and loves in flashback, and wait to hear whether the devilish His Excellency Satan (Laird Cregar) thinks that he has been wicked enough to be admitted to the Underworld.
The performances are first rate, with Ameche at his delightful best, and Tierney is excellent as his fond wife, though she is still inevitably outclassed by such scene-stealers as Charles Coburn as Ameche’s meddling grand-pappy Hugo Van Cleve, and Marjorie Main and Eugene Pallette as Tierney’s Kansas beef tycoon parents, Mrs and Strabel.
Other assets are the exceedingly handsome production, Edward Cronjager’s Technicolor cinematography and Samson Raphaelson’s hugely entertaining screenplay, based on Laszlo Bus-Fekete’s play Birthdays.
Also in the fine cast are Spring Byington, Allyn Joslyn, Signe Hasso, Louis Calhern, Aubrey Mather, Clarence Muse, Dickie Moore, Florence Bates and Clara Blandick, most of whom aren’t above doing a bit of scene-stealing themselves.
Confusingly, Warren Beatty’s 1978 comedy Heaven Can Wait is no relation to the 1943 classic Ernst Lubitsch movie of the same name, but instead a highly amusing and popular remake of Here Comes Mr Jordan (1941).
© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3450
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