Seventh Heaven

Henry King's remake of Borzage's incandescent romance is a film of some sensitivity but little conviction. The setting is again a Paris slum, but Borzage's eternal anywhere becomes both too specific and too vague, tying the action to a time and place that is a never-never land of novelettish convention, while the dark shadow cast by World War I seems more a dramatic convenience than a haunting memory. But the real problem is James Stewart's ineradicably American persona: the ebullient optimism with which his Chico shows Simone's Diane the way to the stars, teaching her to shed her fear of life and to have faith in love, makes him sound like a gung ho boy scout. An affecting little tale, all the same.