Midwife to the Upper Class
About Midwife to the Upper Class
A newlywed couple stops at a stall where babies are for sale. The seller, in a Norman costume, dusts the dolls and cannot please them. She takes them through a door into a cabbage patch and pulls a live baby from each head. They refuse the first seven, two of them in horror, and accept the eighth. The husband pays out of a wool stocking and looks put out by the bill. The babies in the foreground keep moving as the couple leaves.
Cast & crew
More about Midwife to the Upper Class
Alice Guy directed this Gaumont féerie, catalogue number 626, in 1902. The negative is 100 meters. The subject returns to the cabbage-patch babies of her earlier La Fée aux choux, and the two films are often mixed up.
Themes
Preservation
A print survives. A copy runs 4 minutes 34 seconds.
Notes
- The French title is Sage-femme de première classe.
- A Gaumont description says one refused baby is Black and another is presented as a Native American child.
- Yvonne Serand is named on the Gaumont record of the film.
- The picture is in the public domain in the United States.
Scenes
- The seller dusts baby dolls in a flowered stall.
- She lifts live infants out of the cabbages one by one.
- The husband pays from a stocking and flinches at the price.
Influenced by
- La Fée aux choux
Also available
- Internet Archive (silent-sage-femme-de-premire-classe-aka-midwife-to-the-upper-classes)
- Kino Lorber Blu-ray Alice Guy Blaché, Vol. 1: The Gaumont Years (2020)
