Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9786301586054
Format: Closed-captioned
ISBN: 6301586050
Label: 20th Century Fox
Manufacturer: 20th Century Fox
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: 20th Century Fox
Release Date: 1998-09-01
Running Time: 112
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Theatrical Release Date: 1943-08-11

Don Ameche, silver haired and aged to classy elegance, tries to explain to the Devil (a deliciously underplayed Laird Cregar) why he should spend the afterlife down below. "Have you committed any major crimes?" he's asked. "No, but you might say my life has been one long misdemeanor," he replies. He then proceeds to tell his life story: romantic misadventure, infidelities, and the one true love of his life, his faithful wife, played by porcelain beauty Gene Tierney. Ernst Lubitsch's first film in color is a gorgeous evocation of America through three generations and a charming if meandering romantic comedy. Ameche is a fine performer but a limited actor, never capturing that knowing glance or the lively spark of Maurice Chevalier, while Tierney's charm carries her through her role. Cregar (in his brief scenes) and Charles Coburn, who plays Ameche's spunky grandfather, all but steal their scenes with puckish performances. Next to the colorful but vapid 20th Century Fox musicals and romantic comedies, this is a stylish breath of fresh air, but it hardly ranks with such masterpieces as The Shop Around the Corner or To Be or Not to Be. Still, Lubitsch in decline is better than many directors at their best, and Heaven Can Wait remains an amiable, often hilarious lark in exquisite Technicolor. --Sean Axmaker

Customer Rating:
Summary: Heaven Can Wait (1943) unaccountably overrated and stupifying dull!
Comment: This movie is one of the reasons the Criterion Collection's selection process has little credibility with me - the movie, a 1943 vehicle directed by Ernst Lubitsch, features mediocre casting, turtle-like pacing, self-consciously cutesy dialogue, and direction by numbers. Ninotchka it's not!

I bought the movie to see Gene Tierney in one of her first big roles, and she is wasted in curiously unattractive clothing with platitudes for dialogue. She is not helped by the miscasting of Don Ameche as a romantic lothario - he has little affect to his personality, and is definitely not leading man material. I could not believe for a minute that he was a ladies man. Cornel Wilde or Cary Grant would have been more believable.

And why is this a Criterion Film? Beats me. Leave Her To Heaven had better color cinematography, Laura is more of a classic thriller, and All About Eve is one of the all-time best Fox films EVER. Period. Yet this Lubitsch title was chosen for inclusion ......WHY? Thank God I bought this used through a vendor on Amazon - at 39.99, it is a disgraceful waste of money and time!!

Lame story, lackluster leading man, artificial looking color, direction by numbers ..... tbis is a film worth preserving?????

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Customer Rating:
Summary: what happened anyways?
Comment: Hmmm. This movie could have been very cute, and has several fine and comical parts. Unfortunately, too many things don't follow or are clumsily explained, not too mention it should be a good 15 minutes shorter. For me, it would have been a much better story if all of Ameche's so called "sins" were only misunderstandings/misperceptions
from his squareish family (as many seem to be). I was fully expecting them to explained as such by the devil himself at the end, and that he would fully realize his fine character as the devil boots him to heaven.
But if i'm supposed to understand that he really sinned, why is he going to heaven, and what sense does that make alongside his doting relation to his wife? I think this movie is either generally misunderstood or not fully realized, or worse both.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: A great old movie
Comment: This movie was a delight to find! I enjoyed it when I was a teenager and never forgot it. A wonderful movie. I highly recommend it!

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Heaven Can Wait
Comment: A deft, subtly brilliant romantic comedy by the great Lubitsch, "Heaven" examines a privileged man whose boyish love of courtship colors his devotion to his wife, making his life "one continuous misdemeanor." Penned by the gifted Samson Raphaelson and shot in lavish Technicolor, "Heaven" marries urbane wit and bittersweet themes about youth and aging, folly and regret. Ameche and Tierney are a handsome, appealing pair from their first meeting in a bookshop, while Charles Coburn (as scampish Grandpa Hugo) and Allyn Joslyn (as Henry's strait-laced cousin Albert) round out a fabulous supporting cast. Delicate, charming, and almost effortlessly moving.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Great story with great actors
Comment: Extremely well done story about married people in the 1900s. If you don't cry at the end you're really tough. I recommend this movie to anyone who likes people.

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