Le Septième ciel (1958)

Le Septième ciel is a French-Italian film comedy first released in 1958, directed by Raymond Bernard.  The film is based on a novel by André Lang and stars Danielle Darrieux, Noël-Noël, Paul Meurisse, Alberto Sordi and Gérard Oury.  It has also been released under the title: Seventh Heaven.  Our overall rating for this film is: good.


Brigitte de Ledouville is always helping good causes with her personal financial support.  But where does she get all the money from?   With the help of her secretary, Guillaume Lestrange, she seduces rich admirers and sends them off gently to heaven, having first appropriated their money.   She then buries them under a flowerbed in her garden.  Her next admirer is Maurice Portal, who, unknown to Brigitte, is a ruined man who borrowed money from two others crooks...
© Willems Henri (Brussels, Belgium)

Sometimes a movie will offer the viewer an alternate title (e.g. Juliette ou le clé des songes) and whilst we are not given this choice here we may be tempted to come up with Seventh Heaven or Strychnine and Chanel. Instead of two old ladies offing gents with nothing to lose and getting their brother to bury them we are faced with one drop-dead gorgeous forty year old doing the same thing and allowing a friend (rather than a brother) to take care of interment.  For good measure there’s also a gangster element in both films.

Even Godard and Truffaut combined couldn’t make Danielle Darrieux look ordinary and this is far too entertaining for either of them to even contemplate.  Darrieux was, of course an international success, whereas co-star Noël-Noël was strictly domestic and would be unjustly forgotten even in France by now were it not for the international hit Les Choristes, which was a remake of the 1945 film La Cage aux rossignols (in which with Noël-Noël played the Gérard Jugnot role).  Here, he provides a perfect foil for Darrieux.

The gangster takes the form of Gérard Oury, who not only went on to become a fine director but also sired one of the finest French screen writers/directors in Danièle Thompson.  As if this wasn’t enough we also have the great Paul Meurisse and, to round things off, an audacious nod to both Prévert and Les Visiteurs du soir in the last shot.  A delightful soufflé.

© Leon Nock (London, England) 2010 

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