Heaven can Wait

Ernst Lubitsch’s Heaven Can Wait (1943) is one of those deceptively light-footed films whose surface elegance conceals a surprisingly substantial meditation on love, marriage, morality, fidelity and, ultimately, the elusive question of what constitutes a life well lived. Part sophisticated romantic comedy, part fantasy, part period drama and part social satire, the film, starring Don Ameche as Henry Van Cleve and Gene Tierney as his wife, Martha, is a work of considerable tonal dexterity. It received three Academy Award nominations — for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Color Cinematography — but its true distinction lies elsewhere: in Lubitsch’s extraordinary ability to take a premise that might, in less accomplished hands, have descended into either moral sermonising or sexual farce, and transform it into a warm, urbane and unexpectedly poignant inquiry into human imperfection.

The film begins with Henry Van Cleve, having died after a long and comfortable life, arriving at the gates of Hell. There is no terror in his demeanour, nor even the faintest attempt at self-exculpation. Henry is, if anything, remarkably sanguine about his fate: he has come to the conclusion that Hell is precisely where he belongs. Before Satan — addressed with the wonderfully deferential “His Excellency” and played by Laird Cregar with an insinuatingly dry amusement — Henry lays out his case. Yet Satan is distinctly unconvinced that the evidence of Henry’s life is sufficiently damning to merit eternal punishment. Henry therefore embarks upon the extraordinary task of prosecuting himself, recounting the episodes of his earthly existence in the hope of establishing, beyond reasonable doubt, that he has been a sufficiently incorrigible sinner.

It is an ingenious narrative conceit, allowing Lubitsch to shuttle effortlessly through the various stages of Henry’s life — his romantic escapades, familial encounters, misunderstandings, youthful indiscretions and marital complications. The irony, of course, is delicious: the more assiduously Henry attempts to prove that he is a scoundrel, the more clearly the audience perceives that he is, in fact, a fundamentally affectionate, generous and decent human being.

Henry is certainly no paragon of conjugal fidelity. From adolescence onward, he displays an almost irrepressible fascination with women, and marriage proves incapable of entirely curing him of his wandering eye. Yet Lubitsch resolutely refuses to treat his infidelities either as moral monstrosities or as opportunities for vulgar titillation. Henry is very much a product of the privileged milieu into which he has been born — wealthy, cosseted and accustomed to a world that bends rather conveniently to his desires. But he is neither cruel nor predatory, neither malicious nor exploitative. His womanising emerges instead as a curious amalgam of appetite, curiosity, romantic impulsiveness and emotional immaturity.

That distinction lies at the heart of the film. Lubitsch is not suggesting that infidelity is morally inconsequential; rather, he poses the more uncomfortable and infinitely more human question of whether an individual ought ultimately to be judged by isolated transgressions or by the totality of his character. Henry’s existence becomes, in effect, a comic moral ledger. The debits are unmistakable, but so too are the credits: he has sinned, certainly, but he has also loved, cared, amused, supported and brought happiness to those around him.

Gene Tierney’s Martha is therefore indispensable, for she prevents the film from degenerating into a mere catalogue of its protagonist’s amorous adventures. Martha understands Henry with an intimacy that few others possess. She knows his weaknesses, recognises his susceptibility to flirtation and repeatedly encounters the evidence of his infidelity. Yet the emotional bond between them possesses a depth that Henry’s numerous liaisons never remotely approach.

Their marriage is thus an intriguing study in contradiction. Henry can be unfaithful without ceasing to love Martha, while Martha can be wounded and furious without ceasing to understand him. It is one of Lubitsch’s most remarkable achievements that he takes what could easily have become an unpleasant tale of marital betrayal and renders it instead as a nuanced portrait of two people whose emotional connection survives the imperfections, compromises and disappointments of their relationship.

Don Ameche’s performance is crucial to this delicate equilibrium. He does not attempt to transform Henry into an impossibly seductive romantic hero. Instead, he makes him charming, vain, mischievous, occasionally foolish and fundamentally good-hearted. There is a lightness and delicacy in Ameche’s portrayal that prevents Henry from becoming either sanctified or repellent. He makes the character lovable without entirely absolving him, and that distinction is vital. The audience is invited neither to condemn Henry nor to excuse him, but simply to recognise him — as one recognises most human beings — as a bundle of contradictions.

Among the supporting performances, Charles Coburn is particularly memorable as Henry’s grandfather, Hugo Van Cleve. Coburn injects an earthy, irreverent vitality into a family otherwise steeped in the rituals of upper-class propriety. The grandfather understands Henry far better than Henry’s parents ever seem capable of doing, and his indulgent tolerance provides much of the comic vitality of the film’s early passages. The supporting ensemble — including Spring Byington, Louis Calhern, Eugene Pallette, Marjorie Main, Signe Hasso and Laird Cregar — helps Lubitsch populate the narrative with a convincing social universe, in which manners, expectations and hypocrisy become as important as the romantic entanglements themselves.

But the real star of Heaven Can Wait is, unmistakably, Ernst Lubitsch. His celebrated “Lubitsch touch” is everywhere: in the suggestive dialogue, the visual wit, the discreet treatment of sexuality, the elegant transitions and, above all, his confidence in the intelligence of his audience. Lubitsch understood that what is left unsaid can often be considerably more amusing — and more sophisticated — than what is explicitly revealed.

A closing door, a telephone conversation, a meaningful glance, an abruptly interrupted exchange or an eloquent silence can communicate an entire romantic episode. Lubitsch does not belabour the obvious; he allows suggestion to do the work of exposition. Sexuality, potentially a source of crudity, becomes instead a realm of implication. His comedy is rarely dependent upon volume or slapstick. It arises from timing, embarrassment, social conventions, double meanings and the delicious discrepancy between what characters say and what they actually mean.

The film’s unconventional moral architecture is perhaps its most intriguing feature. Its central comic premise — that Hell itself may not be particularly interested in admitting Henry — gradually acquires philosophical resonance. If Heaven and Hell are meant to embody absolute moral judgment, where exactly does one place a flawed but loving human being?

Henry has undeniably committed acts that conventional morality would condemn. Yet those transgressions exist alongside affection, generosity, loyalty of another kind, companionship and an evident capacity to make others happy. Lubitsch therefore replaces the simplistic binary of the “good man” and the “bad man” with a proposition both more modest and more profound: human beings are complicated.

The film’s greatest emotional achievement is that beneath all its flirtation, wit and romantic complication, it remains fundamentally a love story about Henry and Martha. The affairs provide the incidents; Martha provides the emotional centre. Their marriage survives because there exists between them something deeper than the contractual ideal of fidelity. They genuinely know one another. They recognise each other’s frailties. They quarrel, forgive, compromise and continue. Lubitsch does not sentimentalise marriage as an institution of flawless harmony; he presents it as the continuing negotiation between two imperfect human beings who nevertheless cannot imagine their lives without each other.

The film’s non-linear structure reinforces this sense of emotional retrospection. Rather than narrating Henry’s existence conventionally, from birth to death, Lubitsch begins at the end and allows memory to reconstruct the life that preceded it. Henry’s reminiscences become almost a cinematic autobiography submitted as evidence before a celestial tribunal. Yet because the audience knows from the outset that Henry is dead, the comedy acquires a faint undertow of melancholy. Every youthful romance, every family quarrel and every marital misunderstanding belongs to a life whose final chapter has already been written.

What I particularly admire about Heaven Can Wait is its extraordinary generosity towards its characters. Much comedy derives its energy from humiliation: someone is exposed, embarrassed, deceived or destroyed for the audience’s amusement. Lubitsch is gentler. His characters may be foolish, vain or ridiculous, but he never seems to despise them. He laughs at human beings because he understands them. His satire is directed at bourgeois respectability, sexual hypocrisy and social convention, but it is seldom venomous. There is irony without cynicism, mockery without malice.

And perhaps that is why the film, despite beginning with death, becomes such a luminous celebration of life. Henry arrives at Hell’s gates convinced that his earthly existence constitutes a catalogue of moral failures. Yet in attempting to prove his wickedness, he inadvertently demonstrates that his life was full — full of love, folly, pleasure, disappointment, companionship and human connection. He behaved badly at times, behaved foolishly at others, disappointed those closest to him and repeatedly fell short of conventional standards of virtue. But he also loved deeply, formed enduring relationships, enjoyed the world and left behind memories that testify to a life that was anything but empty.

The film consequently asks a deceptively simple question: What, after all, constitutes a good life? Is it moral perfection? Absolute fidelity? Social respectability? Material achievement? Or is it, perhaps, the capacity to love and to be loved? Lubitsch never converts the question into a solemn philosophical discourse. He allows comedy, character and circumstance to arrive at the conclusion almost imperceptibly.

Heaven Can Wait is therefore one of Ernst Lubitsch’s warmest and most elegant achievements — a sophisticated romantic comedy that conceals, beneath its polished surfaces and urbane wit, a remarkably tender meditation on mortality, marriage and human fallibility. Henry Van Cleve is a sinner, but not a monster; Martha is a wronged wife, but never a martyr; and Satan himself proves to be a surprisingly discerning arbiter of character. Heaven and Hell consequently become almost incidental. The real territory of the film lies in the infinitely more complicated realm between them: the ordinary human world in which people love imperfectly, betray occasionally, forgive repeatedly, grow old inevitably and, finally, die.

Ultimately, Heaven Can Wait is not really concerned with whether Henry deserves Heaven or Hell. Its more enduring question is whether a flawed life can nevertheless qualify as a good one. Lubitsch’s answer is neither doctrinaire nor sentimental. It is affectionate, amused and profoundly humane: yes. A life need not be morally immaculate to be meaningful; it need only have contained enough love, laughter, generosity and human connection to have mattered. And in transforming a sinner’s defence of his own damnation into an inadvertent celebration of his existence, Lubitsch achieves something rather remarkable: he makes a comedy about death that leaves us, paradoxically, with a renewed appreciation of life.