OPENING NIGHT 2016

7:00PM – HEAVEN CAN WAIT
Ernst Lubitsch (1943) 112 mins G

Lubitsch’s first colour film is a remarkably gentle and deeply humanistic fantasy featuring Don Ameche as an inveterate ladies’ man who calmly accepts he has lived a life of sin and debauchery while recounting his past and requesting admission to hell. Poking sly fun at
the manners, décor, costumes and naughtiness of the turn of the century and beyond, the film’s locales shift luminously between highly stylised and boldly Technicolor renditions of old New York, Kansas City and the modern streamlined waiting room of perdition.

Features pitch perfect performances by Charles Coburn, Eugene Pallette, Laird Cregar and the breathtaking Gene Tierney.

The film has recently been restored by the Academy Film Archive and 20th Century Fox in collaboration with The Film Foundation; it comes to Melbourne very soon after its unveiling at a Hollywood premiere in late 2015.

Please join us downstairs at Optic Kitchen and Bar after the film to celebrate the launch of the Melbourne Cinémathèque’s 2016 program.

Trailer

CTEQ Annotation
‘Heaven Can Wait (Ernst Lubitsch, 1943)’ by Eloise Ross.