Up and Down the Staircases

For Chico and Diane's dramatic ascent to the apartment loft - the titular "7th Heaven" (1927)- a three-story elevator scaffold was constructed that would be able to follow the pair from the ground level to the apartment door on the top floor. The camera dollies forward onto an elevator platform and then is raised (via a system of ropes and pulleys) through the vertical set, viewing actors Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell as they climb the long spiral staircase, as though the viewer is passing through each floor on the ascent. Action is staged with background actors on various floors to give the impression that the set is an actual lived-in building, and a lighting gag (where Farrell lights a match in a darkened alcove) is used to mask a cut in order to give the audience the experience of a continuous, flowing camera movement up to the sky.