Where Are My Children?

This remarkable film provides a rare opportunity to see the celebrated British-born stage actor Tyrone Power (1869-1931), whose son - now far more famous than he - appears in the film as a toddler. The action takes place largely in and around the palatial home of district attorney Richard Walton (played by Power), which in the handsome tinted print currently available considerably helps sugar the pill of the unglamorous and sometimes harrowing detail of this extremely skilfully made film.

Only last week a British Tory MP caused red faces when comments he made five years ago proposing that the jobless have vasectomies became public knowledge; which shows that despite the Nazis' best effort to bring eugenics into disrepute, concern about Homo Sapiens' thinning gene pool continues unabated in the 21st Century, recently well expressed in the movie 'Idiocracy' (2006).

Initially the subject of 'Where Are My Children?' appears to be the advocation of contraceptive birth control as the means to end the misery inflicted upon impoverished women repeatedly bearing children they cannot afford to raise; but even here the implication is the rather heartless one that it would have been better had all the dishevelled and ill cared-for children we see never actually been born in the first place.

However, the focus then shifts to the affluent set, whose womenfolk are depicted as self-centred hedonists shirking their responsibility to future generations by not reproducing; an opinion you'll still hear being expressed today. These women seem to have maintained their state of pristine childlessness through regular abortions - like visits to the dentist - rather than the use of contraception.

Was this really the case a hundred years ago?