This was supposed to be about heaven. You know, that eternal paradise that hangs tantalizingly above us all, zip code somewhere between soft, billowy clouds and unfathomable bliss? Given its nebulous contours, you’d think that cinema history would be rife with depictions of an idyllic afterlife, but most of the time those pearly gates stay locked. Christianity-themed programmers and YA-skewing weepies allow themselves inside the premises, but broader, non-denominational audiences are ever on the outside looking in. Even the waiting room has proven largely inaccessible for decades now, sending any film fanatic with an itch for white robes and glowing halos back into the archives to meet their ethereal needs. They won’t be scratched in earnest, each film stopping agonizingly short of the Good Place, preferring to set up shop just outside city walls, more concerned with earth-bound credentials than euphoric projections. Without ample exposure to the golden-hued delights of the Other Side, we’ll have to settle for judgement day. Get your gavels ready, because this month, we’re exploring Purgatory on the Silver Screen.

Perhaps it’s better described as a waystation, as Mr. Jordan (James Mason) insists near the start of 1978’s Heaven Can Wait. Joe Pendleton (Warren Beatty) could use the clarity; a back-up quarterback for the Los Angeles Rams, he’s just gotten word of an impending big break when a highway accident sends him straight up into the sky. Life is unfair like that, but so is the in between, with the angel in charge of his retrieval (Buck Henry) jumping the gun, plucking Joe from this mortal coil before he’s had a chance to flatline. The error requires compensation, and while Joe’s body has already been cremated by the time all three return to Southern California, there are plenty of other near-death specimens to house his soul, at least on an interim basis. After declining a slew of candidates, Joe settles for the corporeal form of Leo Farnsworth, a monied, uncaring industrialist whose poisoning at the hands of wife Julia (Dyan Cannon) and secretary Tony (Charles Grodin) affords Pendleton with his second chance.

Conflating fiscal opulence with endless ecstasy isn’t exactly happenstance; heaven may be impossible to fully comprehend, but the freedom and authority of an enviable stock portfolio make for quite the terrestrial counterpart. The gobsmacking salaries of today’s professional athletes have most ball players verging on that Farnsworth lifestyle as is, but back in the 70’s, Pendleton’s reincarnation represented a real financial windfall, and one of the central delights of watching Heaven in 2025 is observing all the ways that times have changed. Seeing licensed NFL gear in such a high concept crowd pleaser is unthinkable today, and when a local newspaper headline describes Farnsworth as a ‘local millionaire,’ our modern income gap can’t help but implicitly come under the microscope. Strolling around your mansion in the finest of clothes neatly maps onto the pleasurable half of immortal divinity, but co-directors Beatty and Henry are just as attuned to the saintly rejoinder, with Joe using his new-found wealth almost exclusively for utilitarian good. Fresh blood is always the answer in this filmic scenario, and Pendleton needs only common sense and empathy to reorient Farnsworth’s amorality, acting as an angel by simply caring for the plight of others.

That sort of bird’s eye view would be familiar to Henry Van Cleve (Don Ameche) if he bothered to look around, but the 1940’s were a different time. Concerns for the common man are beyond the purview of director Ernst Lubitsch’s Heaven Can Wait, which is somehow not the source text for Beatty and Henry’s film of the same name. That would be Harry Segall’s identically-titled stage play, later adapted into 1941 film Here Comes Mr. Jordan, and if charting origins and causality across decades had your head spinning, just imagine being Henry. Introduced in a high-ceilinged waiting room adorned in hues of deepest red, our protagonist politely requests admittance to hell from a mustachioed desk clerk (Laird Cregar) who might just be Satan himself. It’s an awfully big ask if you don’t have the credentials, though Van Cleve is eager to prove his bonafides, relaying his whole life story, cradle to grave, as a means of certifying his damnation.

Taking stock of an entire life in the span of two hours was common practice at the time of Can Wait’s release, and what would undoubtedly scan as treacly on a modern big screen becomes winsome with a little yesteryear fairy dust. They even had a name for it, with contemporaneous critics terming the filmmaker’s tender wit and forthright earnestness The Lubitsch Touch, and the finger prints are all over this one. The romance Ameche shares with co-lead Gene Tierney is delectably aspirational, moving from a gently naughty meet cute to marital friction and finally golden years devotion, delicately charting the passage of time throughout. Henry’s tomcat tendencies, which make up the bulk of his supposedly wayward portfolio, are innocuous by today’s standards, and might have even been harmless at the time. For a movie about sin and its eventual fallout, Lubitsch is awfully reluctant to test his audiences’ sympathy.

Directors Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger are even more trepidatious in that regard, but their 1946 feature A Matter of Life and Death never leaves the viewer’s allegiance up to question. Peter Carter (David Niven) is too charming and self-assured to root against, exuding even-keeled charisma even as his plane plummets from a war-torn skyline. A member of Britain’s Royal Air Force, the squadron leader has just uttered his last words to a radio operator named June (Kim Hunter) when he washes ashore on the banks of the mother country. His astonishing survival isn’t a miracle so much as a clerical error, with attempts to retrieve his everlasting soul thwarted by a heavy, concealing fog. The true phenomenon occurs when June happens to stroll by, the two falling head-over heals in love at the moment of first embrace. That’s a little early to be dropping the L word in the withering opinion of Death’s angelic high council, though if Peter and June can prove that their affection is real and lasting, the literally enrobed big wigs might just let it slide.

Romantic commitment isn’t the only thing up for arbitration here, and as often as Death is cited for its technically groundbreaking depiction of the after life, portraying the celestial sphere as a space for airing nationalistic grievances is nearly as inspired. Released in the immediate aftermath of World War II, Powell and Pressburger’s film imagines a heaven where there are still axes to grind, with Peter’s heritage proving the biggest hurdle to earthly reentry. Having an American Minuteman (Raymond Massey) oversee his case seems like a clear conflict of interest, but there’s little friction in the film’s half-hearted brand of xenophobia. The triumphant global tenor of the time all but spoils the outcome before the narrative is even in motion, laying the task of engaging the audience squarely at the feet of the movie’s optical accomplishments. They’re often well-suited, dissolving from black-and-white to color and then back again whenever crossing that empyrean boundary, stocking their seraphic setting with lofty, looming pulpits, and rows upon rows of diverse extras.

All the grandiosity makes for quite the clash with Defending Your Life’s portrayal of the great beyond, but hey, at least the world-class food is all you can eat, and served with a smile. That’s about the best you can say for Judgment City, the purgatory setting of writer/director/star Albert Brooks’ 1991 romantic comedy, envisioning the layover between heaven and hell as a fully-staffed senior living facility. Then again, there is no hell, as condescending explained by Bob Diamond (Rip Torn), the defense attorney overseeing the case of the recently deceased Daniel Miller (Brooks). Defending’s notions break from the right vs. wrong dichotomy of its peers, citing bravery and lack of fear as the ticket to haloed glory, with those failing to exhibit these tenets simply being sent back down for another try-out amidst the living. 

Daniel’s hesitant life on our planet makes a weak case for ascent, especially when pitted against the findings of a dogged prosecutor named Lena Foster (Lee Grant). She’s got no shortage of video evidence to prove Miller’s on-going cowardice, but the hungry eyes of fellow newcomer Julia (Meryl Streep) might just be a sorely-needed shot in the arm. Brooks’ world building and unique set of rules ensure that Defending is always entertaining, but it’s Streep that gives the movie wings, giggling and flirting with an unfussy air that’s been sorely missing since the actor’s all-time-great status calcified in the following years. Seeing her play a normal person, delighted by her own acing of our collective mortal test and ready to indulge in some well-deserved rest and relaxation, is elating, making you wish that our vaunted thespians would take it easy a little more often. She shines through in a role that’s grievously under-written, which is much more than can be said for most of her side playing counterparts.

It’s hard to make a mark in a movie that doesn’t really care about you, and a commonality across all four films is an inattention to those whose eternal fate isn’t open to question. This was a common refrain across all of Beatty’s star vehicles, with the actor’s immovable vaingloriousness baked into his appeal, but ‘78’s Heaven is particularly egregious. Trainer Max Corkle (Jack Warden) doesn’t seem to have a life outside of his interactions with Pendleton, and the rest of the quarterback’s gridiron squad is barely afforded dialogue to begin with. Cannon and Grodin have their fun from the cheap seats, as do the nationalist caricatures littered across A Matter of Life and Death, but they’re all here for comic relief, offering both pictures’ matinee idols something to play against that never risks distracting from the task at hand. Even Defending’s quiver of geriatric extras are only here for laugh lines; their fate isn’t in Brooks’ interest set.

Only ‘43’s Heaven Can Wait is comfortable leaving its protagonist on the sideline for any real stretch of time, but that’s Lubitsch for you. His dedication to humanism breaks through the mold, even when all he finds on the other side is comedy in the form of Ameche and Tierney’s blustering family units. Broad and often hapless, the four parents in question attract their director’s curiosity nonetheless, though the true apple of his eye is grandfather Hugo (Charles Coburn), whose affection for Henry’s rapscallion ways gives the movie its gentle, beating heart. The ecstasy he feels in helping his grandson sweep Tierney away from her childhood home under cover of darkness is tangible and contagious, evidencing the benefits of finding something for all of your actors to play even when the larger story is trained on a solitary individual. Torn lands in a similar spot by following the beat of his own drum, stealing the spotlight in a film that’s perpetually more concerned with its amorous exploits.

Given that love is the height of the human experience, it makes sense that all four flicks would reflexively equate it to whatever hallowed place comes next, each more trained on the feeling and its validity than the paramours on display. There’s no ‘there’ there for either ‘78 Heaven or Life and Death’s leading females, a pair of sounding boards meant to prove their male co-star’s depth of feeling by simply fielding their adoration. Tierney is conceived with more dimensions, and Streep’s effortless brilliance is more than enough to make her the apple of just about any eye, but the cumulative result is telling, especially in a quartet of features that are all directed by men, each hewing tightly to their masculine leads. Cries of sexism are unavoidable, but there’s a chance all six filmmakers have what it takes to beat the case. It’s certainly not their steepest hill to climb in the court of law.

Our tellurian judicial system isn’t the only area where all four flicks prove reluctant to imagine anything beyond the known, but it’s certainly the most attention grabbing. Both Heaven Can Waits stop short of judges and juries, but nonetheless ask their protagonists to prove their celestial bonafides from first frame to last. Matter and Defending are decidedly more literal, with eager witnesses and damning cross examinations that resemble any number of courtroom thrillers throughout cinematic history. Turns out passing the bar is just important in heaven’s waiting room as it is down here on the soil, emblematic of our inability to reckon with all that religion has told us about the aftermath of one’s last breath. If there’s anything in the Bible, Quran, or Torah about an airplane hanger, scholars and theologians have yet to find it.

That’s exactly where we find Joe Pendleton at the start of Heaven Can Wait, unwittingly slotted into a line of soon-to-be passengers, fog machines threatening to burst from overuse. Beatty and Henry’s visualization of purgatory might be clumsy, but it’s got ample company in that department, joined by Lubitsch’s sinister lobby, Powell and Pressburger’s vacuous meeting room, and Brooks’ retirement community. With the exception of that last example, they’re each flooded with the same billowing mist of your overzealous neighbor’s Halloween decorations, and even the results are vaguely analogous. When your subject defies ideation, it’s best to double back to safer shores, vaguely concealing the particulars, and allowing onlookers to project to their own fanciful notions. Or just not go there at all.

A Matter of Life and Death, Defending Your Life, and both Heaven Can Waits’ refusal check-in on the other side of the pearly gates is matched by their protagonist’s reluctance to peek behind the curtain. The only centrifugal force with any eagerness for the afterlife, Henry Van Cleve, would rather go down than up, and it’s not hard to see why. Pain and torture are much more tangible than abiding contentment, and thereby simpler to communicate on film, making for a puzzle that a century of movies have yet to solve. The prospect of heaven is too alluring and omnipresent for the medium to wholly ignore, but directors who are chomping at the bit to illuminate its parameters are few and far between. They won’t even put the Big Guy up on screen, resulting in a subgenre where even the stand-out entries are comprised of half measures. When the radiance is so bold as to be blinding, stopping right at the door seems to be an amiable compromise. We all want to know what comes next, but no one wants to proffer an educated guess. Best to take a seat, and wait until your number is called.