7th Heaven (1927) - Directed by Frank Borzage

My Darling Chico,

You have been away from me for nearly 2 years now at war. I simply can't believe you've been away that long. It's also been so long since I've heard from you. I miss you so much. We parted on our wedding day and I relive those last moments together as if they exist outside of time. I wonder how you are and pray to God that you will return home soon. I long for you to hold me in your arms. So many moments of our short life together come flooding back to me. I woke up on the street that day to you holding a violet over my face to wake me up. Words can’t express how much I wanted you to take me in your arms and carry me away to safety. I had hardly met you but quickly I knew you were something special. You so selflessly gave of yourself to me, saving my life, when even I didn’t think it worth saving. Claiming me as your wife to keep me from going to jail..... I could tell you had a good heart right from the start and I knew we were meant to be.

The moment we entered the building where you lived that evening and we began ascending level by level up to your flat, my heart raced with anticipation to when I’d arrive in your place. We just kept ascending as if we’d go through the clouds. I wanted to go higher and higher and let the world drift away and be only with you. If only you knew the joy that you brought me as we entered into a new world together. You believed in life and its possibilities and it made me so excited. That night I undressed in your room and slipped into your bed while you were outside. I secretly wanted you to be near me and hold me close and tender. I hoped you would come into bed with me after you removed your pants and shirt. I peeked over the covers as you were undressing and saw your bare chest and it made my body flush. I wanted your body to lie next to mine and feel your skin against mine. I got up to peek around the corner and you were just so cute and sweet to be lying on the balcony. It was a rush of affection and joy through my body just to know that you respected me that way even though I was desperate for your warmth.

But now my dear I am beyond desperate. I haven’t seen you in so long and I long to feel your hands caress my hair and cheek, to feel your kiss on my lips, and to feel your body press against mine. Every moment I’m away from you is so hard. Every minute that passes without you near me is endless. I will simply die if you do not come back to me. Life cannot continue on this way without you. I have shed so many tears for you that I feel all of my tears have dried up and I am empty. Now my body aches and my eyes hurt every time I think of you. The tears will simply not flow and I am overcome by a black emptiness covering over me for which there is no respite.

When I came to you on the balcony dressed in my wedding dress I felt so glorious….and then you told me that you loved me for the first time. I was so happy. You remember how happy I was? I was so happy! And then I heard the sound of soldiers in the street. I didn’t want this to break us apart, but I tried to be strong for the both of us. And then you picked me up and kissed me and held me so close to you for so long and you were so strong holding me and I whispered things in your ear. And I wanted you to take me to bed right then and there. It was the most glorious and romantic moment of my life to be in your embrace. When you told me you wanted to marry me at that moment I was overcome with joy and feeling. I wanted us to be one, to be man and woman for eternity. We placed the necklaces over each other and promised to be true forever. I cherish that moment and the neckless hangs from my neck and dangles between my breasts this very moment. Come back to me Chico. Please with all your might come back to me my husband. You parted from me at 11am. And I think of you as if you were touching me and talking to me every day at 11am and I chant your name over and over and over again and speak to you out there wherever you are. If only you could be here with me. I can’t bear to think of where you are or what kind of danger you are in. I simply can’t begin to believe how awful it must be for you and how much you must be longing to touch me and be back here in our little heaven. I truly wish God’s angels to be surrounding you and protecting you. Believe me when I tell you we are shoulder to shoulder my love. I am working hard each day at the munitions factory. Somehow it helps to pass the time and I think that if I work hard enough it will bring you back to me.

Oh my dearest Chico I must finish this letter as it is late and tomorrow I must be at the munitions factory at dawn. Please write to me Chico. I miss you so desperately and I am being strong for you but I need you to return soon. I know that you will return to me and I believe with all my heart that this day will come soon for us. And on that day when you return to me oh how the glories of heaven will resound when we are rejoined. You must believe Chico. You must believe that our Love will bring you through any and all odds and nothing will keep us apart. Not even hell’s fury itself will be allowed to touch you. Our love is pure and true and righteous and I just know and believe that you will return. Please Chico….please return home soon.

I love you. I love you. I love you.

Diane

Street Angel (1928) - Directed by Frank Borzage

A few weeks ago I went on a Frank Borzage binge, a deep dive into 7 films of his that I’ve never seen before. In fact, until that week, somehow I had managed to never see a Frank Borzage film…..ever. This was the list of films I watched: 7^th Heaven, Street Angel, Lucky Star, Bad Girl, After Tomorrow, and The Shining Hour. Borzage represents a style of filmmaking that would seem to me to have almost been completely eliminated from our consciousness. Here we have a director who pulls together some fantastically staged visual themes of love and sexuality, complete with some wonderfully expressive use of atmosphere: streets, apartments, rooftops. Yet he throws in heavy doses of wild melodrama. Now melodrama, in the hands of Sirk, tends to be something that modern audiences have received well. There’s something about Sirk’s use of color and tone that adds a layer of subversion to his melodrama. But Borzage tells his stories with a straight face, in black and white. There’s really nothing inherently funny or campy per se lurking beneath the surface. Borzage’s version of melodrama is irony free, and I don’t think today’s viewers know what to do with that.

Although 7^th Heaven gets most of the attention, and Lucky Star is a hidden gem, Street Angel is Borzage’s best film of the bunch that I’ve seen and is a romantic masterpiece, standing with the greatest love stories of all time. It is the story of a woman named Angela (Janet Gaynor), who in need of some money to purchase medicine for her mother, attempts to prostitute herself on the street, and winds up getting arrested for robbery and sentenced to a year in a work house. She runs off before being imprisoned, and escapes to find her mother dead at home. She avoids the cops and runs off to join the circus, where she meets a painter named Gino. They strike up an awkward friendship, but soon bond and fall in love. Their blossoming love, and impending marriage is threatened when the police find her again. She is taken to prison while Gino is unaware. He thinks she is lost forever, and things get really interesting when she is released a year later.

Janet Gaynor won the first Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayals in three films: Sunrise (1927), 7^th Heaven (1927), and Street Angel (1928). AMPAS first designed these awards to be based upon an actor’s body of work for that entire year. If you had to ask me, I think her performance in Street Angel is the best of the three. I don’t think Sunrise capitalizes on her sincere and varied emotional qualities as well as the Borzage films, and in fact Borzage makes far greater use of melodramatic elements than Murnau ever did. She has a girl next-door quality about her and also a burgeoning sexuality that was not an easy combination to pull off for other actresses in this era like Garbo, Brooks, or Gish (all of whom were either too beautiful or too saintly for those descriptors to match up). She has great chemistry with her leading man, Charles Ferrell, whom she appeared with in a total of 12 films together! His performance here is very solid, and much more understated than in 7^th Heaven. Her character hovers in the realm of the Madonna/Whore complex, which is used here to illicit some specific choices that Ferrell’s character must make regarding his view of her. She is in fact, neither all good nor all bad, but in fact, a real woman whom he must decide if he can love her the way she is.

Borzage’s use of wildly ridiculous melodramatic elements is to my mind, highly entertaining and emotionally satisfying, and part of what Borzage is all about: the obstacles thrown in love’s way forces us to sacrifice, make tough choices, and is a true test of how devoted one really is to one's lover. Love is not proven true, until it perseveres beyond adversity, and this is most apparent in his silent films especially: 7^th Heaven, Street Angel, and Lucky Star. His emphasis on depth of field, set design, and lighting were also great choices. Street Angel includes some fantastic tracking shots and pans, use of silhouette and shadow, and of particular note, the intense scene among the thick fog along the docks at the end of the film. This is a spectacular shot, filled with suspense and romantic desperation that then culminates in a perversely emotional climax that finishes in a church. It is one of the greatest romantic endings to any film I’ve seen and caps the film with a feverish pitch. I wish that audiences of today could appreciate this stuff more, but we’ve been so trained to snicker and doubt the sanity of films like this. Street Angel is too well made, and too spectacular to be left by the wayside though. It’s a masterpiece to my mind.