I remember watching Ninotchka as well as To Be Or Not to Be, back in the mists of distant time. So I had a memory of Lubitsch as a subversive figure within the Hollywood cannon, someone with a measured European sophistication. In that regard, Heaven Can Wait felt like an anti-climax, with its conservative discourse on what makes for an ethical man. The apparent moral being that it’s ok to be a bit of a roguish philanderer, so long as you settle down sooner or later and marry a good woman. Don Ameche’s Van Cleve never seems wicked enough to be permitted entry to hell, which is what the initial set-up suggests.
Perhaps more interesting is the comparison between Heaven Can Wait and It’s A Wonderful Life, both films made in the shadow of war, which analyse the ethical question of what represents a well-lived and honorable life. At a time when death was riding pillion all over the world, this was clearly a pertinent issue, although both films neatly sidestep any political grandstanding. Both are helmed by European-born directors who would have been well versed in the Faust story, and both films adopt an upbeat, anti-Faustian position, where the everyday North American actions are given greater weight than vaulting European ambition. Faust goes to hell, whereas Van Cleve is promised heaven. This upbeat celebration of North American banality made sense in the forties, when the USA had ridden to Europe’s rescue and the tricky question of the country’s origins could still be ignored under the rubric of civilisation versus ‘the savages’. Films couldn’t be made without the technology of this civilisation, and film is what rescued both directors from the hell that Europe had recently become. All of which might help to explain the slightly soft-soap tone of Lubitsch’s popular film.
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