NR | 1 h 42 min | Drama, Romance | 1937
Set in 1914 against the backdrop of World War I, director Henry King’s movie begins with a glimpse into the lives of the poor who clean one of Paris’s lowliest hovels. It’s where the seediest mingle with the saintly, and prostitutes and pimps hustle alongside priests and prophets.
A godless sewer-man Chico (James Stewart) falls for and rescues pretty Diane (Simone Simon) from the clutches of her exploitative sister-pimp Nana. Disgusted by having to live in fear and poverty, through no fault of his own, Chico defiantly declares his atheism before the local priest, Fr. Chevillon (Jean Hersholt). Why trust in a God who’s deaf to prayer?
Chevillon uses his influence to answer Chico’s prayer, getting him promoted from sewer-man to street washer. In the pernicious Parisian pecking order, that’s more like ascending a stair than a flight of stairs.
Chevillon then presses sacred pendants into Chico’s hands and insists that he also take responsibility for Diane. Chico accepts both to humor Chevillon, not as a sign of any newfound faith, but an openness to what faith might offer. That journey offers him and Diane far more than they imagine: a bit of hell, but more than a bit of heaven.
Chico’s excuse to refute God’s existence is simple: humanity’s double-standards. When something good happens it’s a miracle, but when something bad happens, everybody shuts up! He finds that too pat. But something gives, as he hears Chevillon tease him, “God has a sense of humor, and the joke is on you.”
Solemnly, King uses the 11th hour of Armistice Day as a motif in Chico’s 11th hour, and his near-telepathic commune with Diane, when war rudely separates them.
Less solemnly, King satirizes Parisian social hierarchies of the time. Many look down on those lower in the social stairway, but there’s always someone higher still, looking down on them. When Chico proudly ascends to the rank of street washer, his colleague, seemingly oblivious to Chico’s former station in the sewers, cautions him not to take any nonsense from the sewer-man.
King’s 1937 film is based on Frank Borzage’s 1927 silent film, in turn inspired by the Broadway play of the same name.
‘Never Look Down, Always Look Up!’
Chico’s miserable garret is up seven flights of stairs, spiraling like a giant spring. Here King uses the stairway to transcend the idea of social standing. It becomes a symbol for a journey, from faithlessness to faith, from fear to fearlessness, from self-loathing to selfless love.King’s camera shows you in one fluid, unbroken shot Chico, and later Diane, ride up all seven flights. Interestingly, he doesn’t show you anyone coming down. He’s making a point.
When Diane fears walking across a precarious, foot-wide walkway hovering above the street far below, Chico who runs across it daily warns, “Never look down, always look up!” Diane’s way of looking up is to look at Chico. Suddenly, she’s not afraid anymore. King’s point: You’re lovable only because you’re loved first.
Chico discovers that it’s only because God loves him first that he’s able to love himself, let alone anyone else. If God’s love isn’t in him, he’d find it impossible to love anyone else. Not realizing its profundity, he mutters, “The idea inside me was God.”
Likewise, Diane learns to love herself and Chico, because he first embraces her in love.
Chico’s neighbor Aristide (J. Edward Bromberg) is an over smart prophet of the stars (an astrologer). Yet, for all his reading of distant skies, he’s unable to read people and life as Chico does.
Feeling stained by prostitution, Diane loathes and nearly kills herself. Chico? He philosophizes. You may do bad things from time to time, but that doesn’t mean that you’re a bad person, especially if you detest those ways and want to change. He knows he’s a sewer-man, as near to “nothing” as a man can be, but then thinks: “I am not nothing. All my life in the sewer has never made me feel low. Why, sometimes I feel like a king.”
King reveals this duality in the way Chico ends up saying kind things he doesn’t mean or helping someone he’d rather not. He feels that it’s not just a superficial impulse that drives him, not just some base instinct bubbling over, but something a little deeper. Those around him see it too, but dimly.
As you climb King’s cinematic stairway, Chico’s idea of seeing acquires a loftier vista, and you may quite like the view from up there.
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