Ernst Lubitsch directs Heaven Can Wait with his usual taste and flair, but the film is surprisingly dull and sentimental compared to his best work. It lacks the irony and sophistication of Trouble in Paradise, the comic energy of To Be or Not To Be, or the humanity of The Shop Around the Corner. Much of the problem seems to lie in an unusually flat script from the great Samson Raphaelson. The story of recently deceased Henry Van Cleve recounting his lecherous escapades to "His Excellency" down below in order to gain entrance to Hell seems ripe for a Lubitsch film, and the opening sequence in the amazing art deco lobby of the Inferno shows great promise, but the story has a maudlin quality that it never really escapes.
We're never shown any of Henry's love affairs, which, in hindsight, the film could have probably used. Don Ameche is at his best in Heaven Can Wait when he gets to turn on the charm. Instead, we're only told about the episodes indirectly via conversations between Henry and his long-suffering wife, Martha. The story also seems conflicted in its purposes. On one hand, Raphaelson and Lubitsch try tugging at our heart-strings by having us feel sympathy for Martha as she struggles with Henry's indiscretions, and on the other, we're supposed to laugh with Henry precisely BECAUSE he's constantly cheating on his wife. That's just the way he is, we're instructed, and isn't he still wonderful? Even the Devil finds Henry charming and his infidelity a mere trifle. We all know that lovable Henry really belongs in Heaven with the wife he cheated on for several decades. It's a fairly sexist film in that regard. Somehow, the charming scoundrel element doesn't work in Heaven Can Wait as it does in so many other Hollywood films. Perhaps Don Ameche doesn't have the Cary Grant panache to carry it off. He does make a rather listless Lothario in this one. Gone is that dynamic energy he had in a film like Midnight, which is a superior work based on somewhat similar themes. In that case, Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett out-Lubitsched the director they admired so much. But I'm not sure Grant or any other scoundrel could have done much with Raphaelson's script. Ameche does what he can.
The rest of the cast is quite good, with Charles Coburn at his mischievous best, and several fine secondary actors. Gene Tierney does well in a difficult role, though her hairstyle when Martha gets older has not lasted well through the ages. Somehow this very beautiful actress winds up looking a bit like the Bride of Frankenstein. Overall, Heaven Can Wait is a solid film, with some good moments strewn about here and there. But it's not Lubitsch at his best.
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