Hollywood's foremost romantic visionary, Frank Borzage auditioned a parade of major theater and movie stars before selecting Gaynor and Farrell as the central couple in his magnum opus, 7th Heaven. Based on the phenomenally successful Broadway play by Austin Strong, Borzage's film version features Gaynor as the vulnerable gamine opposite Farrell's stoic Parisian street cleaner. In typically Borzagean fashion, the young lovers fall for each other and form their own privatze world in a garret apartment while the outside world is in the throes of World War I. The picture won a raft of awards, and Gaynor was praised for her ability “to combine ingénue sweetness with a certain suggestion of wide-awake vivacity; to mix facial lyricism with a credible trace of earthiness” (New York Herald Tribune). Tender, luminous, and achingly poetic, 7th Heaven set new standards for expressive acting and evocative mise-en-scène-the irreducibly visual hallmarks of cinema before the advent of sound.