Sage-femme de première classe

Alice Guy's second or third (or, who knows, fourth or more) variation on the cabbage-patch folklore of human reproduction (akin to the stork one), whereby babies are born in a cabbage patch, varies from the 1896/1900 version(s) of "The Cabbage-Patch Fairy" (see my comments on La fée aux choux (1896) and La fée aux choux, ou la naissance des enfants (1900)) in being an early story film, whereas the other is of the cinema-of-attractions mode, a direct address of spectacle and returned gaze to the spectator in lieu of a narrative or fourth wall. "Midwife to the Upper Class" is also comprised of two shots instead of one. This development is consistent with the historical development of filmmaking standards from cinema as a novelty to the rise of narrative cinema, continuity editing and, soon thereafter, nickelodeons and movie culture. Guy's subsequent film to feature the cabbage patch, "Madame's Cravings" (1906) is even more mature. How appropriate that films mythologizing birth work rather well to track the birth and growth of Guy's own filmmaking and, by extension, developments in cinema overall.

The first shot features a windowed exterior, with the midwife inside, and the couple (a woman and Guy herself in Pierrot-type drag, which, especially now, is open to a queer reading) embracing outside. The midwife comes out from behind the window by, apparently, walking around the set, and the three play with a doll for a bit. The upper-class couple, then, are led by the midwife through the door. The next shot shows them entering the cabbage patch. The transition between the two shots either involves a hypothetical two doors or is a temporal replay, which was common back then. Georges Méliès's "A Trip to the Moon" (1902) contains a similar repeated action from a different perspective for the landing on the Moon. Another example, Edwin S. Porter's "Life of an American Fireman," which due to later re-editing was misbelieved by some to feature some of the earliest crosscutting in film history, contains a few and an especially long temporal replay. In the case of this film, two doors may be plausible, though, because the order of characters entering through the entryway in the first shot is different than those exiting in the second.

Regardless, the midwife, next, pulls some infants out from behind cabbages, for the buyers to examine. Even this early in the development of narrative cinema, there's potentially offensive racial representation, as the couple is disgusted by a black baby and reject another with a feather headdress (as opposed to the otherwise nude ones), both of them apparently undeveloped, as represented by dolls instead of living babies like the white ones laid out on a towel at the bottom of the frame. Eventually, the couple gets a newborn they like, Guy pays the midwife, the couple kiss and exit. Whether an analogy for adoption or fable on natural birth, the satire on class and wealth advantages in bringing children into the world is reflected in the cabbage patch. Absent in the original film(s), the erotic display of afore, where the fairy in low-cut costume moved dance-like and locked eyes with the spectator is replaced here by transactional narrative.

Besides the addition of a narrative to the cabbage patch, this version is interesting for the role of the midwife acting as a mediator to the development of the cabbage-patch plot--something of the surrogate filmmaker on screen as was the fairy in the 1896/1900 film(s). In this self-reflexive reading, the cabbages would be the cinematographic apparatus and the infants the films. The couple represent the spectator, us, being wrapped inside of the plot, whereas the fairy in the prior "The Cabbage-Patch Fairy" directly addressed us as outside the frame. Guy playing the masculine-gendered spouse in this one instead of the midwife rather ruins this metaphor, though. Anyways, see "Madame's Cravings" next to see how far Guy could take this attractive and narrative cabbage patch.

Although many of Alice Guy's movies were simply shot one-scene re-enactments of short vaudeville skits -- what would later evolve into black-out gags -- this was a rather elaborately staged work for her and mocks middle-class pretension, showing how they get their babies.... from a large cabbage patch in the midwife's garden! The sets are clearly sets.... not for Guy the elaborate backgrounds of Melies! Instead her viewpoint was that this was a theater piece and the aesthetics were those of someone sitting in a seat in a live theater. To a great extent, she maintained this viewpoint through the end of her career and it makes her work far less cinematic to the modern eye than the equally bizarre imaginings of Melies..... but hers is an important stage in the evolution of the modern film, something that had to be gotten through, and at least we can be grateful for her records of the contemporary stage.

Alice Guy was the first female film director. This film features a moment which clearly has racist tones and even without that, the film is very unimpressive artistically even for 1902. Her first film 'La Fee Aux Choux' is actually lost. No footage survives. Online footage claiming to be that film is a remake from the year 1900 by the same woman director. The 1900 version depicts what amounts to risking harm to babies when the actress (apparently also Alice Guy) lets go of a baby's head allowing it to fall backwards onto the floor then picks another baby up by one arm/shoulder! Anyone knows these things could cause a baby pain and possible injury.

This 1902 film by the same director similarly involves a strange, stagebound scenario involving babies. First there is a stall presenting dolls to a couple. This whole scene is artistically unimpressive even for its age but it is the next scene which makes the film even more problematic. There is a bizarre setting where numerous babies are presented to a couple seemingly for them to pick one to take home. The babies are presented like showing items in a shop and are placed - more carefully than in Guy's earlier film, thankfully - on the floor after being briefly looked at by the couple. The weirdness of the scene and the lack of value shown for the babies which are left on the floor on cloths like discarded toys makes this a poor scene but worse than that, a black baby is at one point presented to the couple for approval and they recoil and react with total disgust. The baby is then discarded and more white babies are presented. The racism of this is obvious. What makes this even more annoying is that Alice Guy is promoted by her fans as a pioneer of race relations having made a film in 1912 called A Fool and His Money apparently featuring an all black cast. Well on viewing this film it is clear Ms. Guy has no place as a race relations pioneer in film and there is also zero of artistic quality to recommend it.

By 1900 there were impressive and innovative works of early film being produced by the likes of Georges Melies, Walter R. Booth and James Williamson which are hugely technically and artistically advanced compared to this very crude and inept film. In 1902, the same year as this film, Melies created the famous, hugley innovative and pioneering work Le Voyage Dans La Lune. That film was a film running to far greater length over various scenes depicting a full story of a trip to the moon and featuring numerous special effects and cutting edge techniques. This Alice Guy film is truly pathetic in comparison and in addition is quite racially offensive.

The first female filmmaker in the world, Alice Guy, made her debut in 1896 in a short film about the fairy of the cabbages, a French fairytale. That historical film (not only the first film by a woman but arguably also rhe earliest narrative film!) is unfortunately lost, and it is often confounded with a remake from 1900. That second film with just 30 seconds is uninteresting, but Guy made, two years afterwards, one more remake, four-minute long. This 1902 version has some mockery both on buying children and while dealing with dolls instead of real babies. That was funny, in the first part. The second part, however, is longer than it would be desirable, unnecessarily (and I am not sure if the doll in the second part - 2'24'' - was representing a black human... I seriously hope it was not!). The film is interesting, anyway. Alice Guy herself also dressed as a man in order to act as part of the couple who was asking the fairy for a baby, what is also remarkable.