Incomplete contracts and consider some of the consequences of contractual Incompleteness

Heaven Can Wait & Godard's Une Femme

Heaven Can Wait

A man knocks at the door of spontaneously devil. It's the elegant boss from hell. Just after his death, Henry Van Cleve, persuaded deserve eternal fire with the devil comes and asks her to hell. The latter, overwhelmed charming but seems uncertain fate of his visitor and take the time to listen to his story, or rather the women in his life. The man recalls his life indeed bourgeois character exalted and ham, bad faith confusing, stopping on the various differences in morality that have marked his career. Except the scenes in hell, a kind of large waiting room, all the scenes of the film takes place one day anniversary of the hero. It 'a comedy that, in flashback summarizing 60 years of a man's life, ostensibly claims to "say nothing" but "is the recapitulation of many reasons and archetypal figures that have haunted Lubitsch from the beginning: the myth of Don John, that of Faust, one of the Double, the role of the woman as a mother and as Death "(G. Fink).

Overview

Heaven can wait as history follows two of the most successful of Ernst Lubitsch that are Ninotchka with Greta Garbo and To Be or Not to Be , v delivery of Carole Lombard . His mastery of the romantic comedy is proven. Unlike those two films, however, it has no political agenda. He is hiding in the intimate sphere, family and plays more on moral and social register. Jewel light humour and tenderness, Heaven Can Wait is the last great critical and public success of Lubitsch.

Plot

Henry (Henry) Van Cleve, dies and comes to Mephistopheles in order to be admitted to hell, believe they do not deserve anything, but His Excellency does not seem willing to accept it, however, and 'willing to listen to his story. Henry tells of being born into a wealthy family in New York and have been since the beginning pampered and spoiled by the women in his life: his mother, grandmother, nanny, a girlfriend Mariolina, that seven years or down ' of them ', after receiving a gift from him two golden scarabs, taught him that in order to be "well-liked by women takes many, many beetles." Fifteen years later, the French maid started it in French to the pleasures of the senses, and since then his career as a "libertine" and 'continued unabated until the 26th birthday.

A special place among the people who have it spoiled his grandfather who lived in him a reflection of all the pranks he had never done in his life and so he wanted to do, and often it has funded in its happy adventures. Likewise, the father, instead of disciplining and despite being totally opposite character, he always justified and supported. On the day of 26th birthday Henry kidnapped and married Martha, in love with his initiative and gallantry, girlfriend of his cousin Albert, to whom he had promised ...