Tuesday, February 22, 2022, 7:30 p.m., Dryden Theatre
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Heaven Can Wait (1943). Photofest.
(Ernst Lubitsch, US 1943, 112 min., 35mm)
The 1943 Technicolor production Heaven Can Wait is a look at the inevitability of death and a meditation on the rewards and punishments of the afterlife, all part of a funny and profoundly human chronicle of an unimportant man’s life. Ushered into the reception area of a place “innumberable people had so often told him to go,” Henry Van Cleve (Don Ameche) meets with “His Excellency” (Laird Cregar) and begins to recount his life, including how he met, pursued, and stole the love of his life, Marth (Gene Tierney). Don Ameche gives the performance of his career, and Gene Tierney is at her spunkiest yet most beautifully vulnerable.