Casting Fox contract player Janet Gaynor as a Parisian street urchin and newcomer Charles Farrell as the sanitation worker who loves her, director Frank Borzage created one of the great screen couples, an alliance that would continue through 11 more films. 7th Heaven stands as Borzage’s strongest expression of the transcendent power of romantic love, evoking emotions of such strength and purity that only the dream world of silent film could contain them. At the first Academy Awards ceremony, the film won Oscars for Gaynor (Best Actress), Borzage (Best Director) and Benjamin Glazer (Best Adapted Screenplay).

This presentation comes from a new digital restoration funded by Twentieth Century Fox and based on the only surviving nitrate print from MoMA’s collection (Musuem of Modern Art).