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Fantastic!

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

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.

According to this film by Alice Guy, the rich don't need to go through all the pain, trouble and mess of childbirth. Instead, we see a perspective couple show up at a weird place where they have baby dolls on display. You pick the style you like and then the matron takes you to another room where they have a bunch of giant cabbages. Then, the baby you want is harvested and you take the little nipper home! Very convenient and rather funny. This compares very well to a typical film of the day--being funnier and more imaginative, that's for sure! If only this were real!! For a laugh, show this to small children when they ask "where do babies come from?".

Serpentine Dance by Lina Esbrard (1902) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Midwife to the Upper Class (1902) *** (out of 4) An Untimely Intrusion (1902) *** (out of 4) Miss Dundee and Her Performing Dogs (1902) *** (out of 4)Four more early works from female director Alice Guy from the recent Kino's collection of Gaumont Studio shorts. SERPENTINE DANCE BY LINA ESBRARD features the lady doing a dance, which really isn't too different than the countless other serpentine dances being done by various studios as well as an earlier one by Guy herself. MIDWIFE TO THE UPPER CLASS is a "spoof" of rich people as a couple (with the man being played by a woman) visits a cabbage patch to buy a kid. This comedy doesn't really feature any true laughs but it remains fun thanks in large part to the sets, which are quite creative in their own way. It's also worth noting that the film has two different settings, which might not seem like much today but back in 1902 this was something rather new (and refreshing). The movie has a rather typical and racist joke where the couple are shown a black baby but they turn their heads in disgust so the sensitive types should be warned. AN UNTIMELY INTRUSION is another comedy about a husband and wife fighting in their room when their landlady walks in just as the husband throws something across the room. Of course, it nails the landlady and soon there's an even bigger fight. This one here actually does manage to get a rather nice laugh as all the action, in the tight 55-seconds, manages to be rather violent and quite funny. The print from Kino is missing several frames and it appears that some footage is slightly missing. MISS DUNDEE AND HER PERFORMING DOGS is exactly what the title says. Dog lovers will certainly get a kick out of this short but so will those not overly friendly with the animals. This films runs just under four-minutes and features around twelve dogs doing all sorts of jumping tricks but the highlight is when one dog plays dead while another, dressed as a nun, kneels down besides him and says a prayer.

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.