Works featuring "birthing" (6)

Madam's Fancies/Madame's Cravings (Madame a des envies)

This shows that pregnancy is an opportunity for a woman to ruthlessly indulge every passing fancy. But her jones, can break his bones - partners beware! Uses medium shots within the narrative, in a way similar to the 1903 'Mary Jane's Mishap.'

Max Linder's Big Family (Je voudrais un enfant)

Max feels his marital bliss is incomplete. Somewhat similar to the 1904 The Strenuous Life, Or, Anti-Race Suicide, with absurd comedy replacing social satire. A bit unnerving to watch Max do his manic antics near real infants.

Where Are My Children?

“All intelligent people know that birth control is a subject of serious public interest. Newspapers, magazines and books have treated different phases of this question. Can a subject thus dealt with on the printed page be denied careful dramatization on the motion picture screen?...In producing this picture the intention is to place a serious drama before adult audiences...”

This somber introduction is immediately followed by:

“Behind the great portals of Eternity, the souls of little children waited to be born.”

And on it goes like this, shifting between pretense of weighty social drama and wallowing in cabbage-patch airy-fairy fantasy, linked by hackneyed melodrama and annoying overuse of cross-cutting, while hammering its messages - abortion is murder, humanity's salvation is birth control (for the poor), becoming a submissive baby factory is the duty of every woman (if she's wealthy) - only approaching realism in its wonderfully dark and depressing ending. Movie in a nutshell: Living with a pompous, self-righteous, hypocritical Dickless Attorney leaves wife with no desire to breed more of his kind. There - 65 minutes saved.