Cast:
Tyrone Power Sr (District Attorney Richard Walton), Helen Riaume (Mrs. Richard Walton), Marie Walcamp (Mrs. William Carlo), Cora Drew (Walton's Housekeeper), Rena Rogers (Lillian - Housekeeper's Daughter), A.D. Blake (Roger - Mrs. Walton's Brother), Juan de la Cruz (Dr. Herman Malfit), and C. Norman Hammond (Dr. William Homer) Directed by Lois Weber (#644 - The Blot and #1809 - A Chapter in Her Life) and Phillips Smalley.
Review:
In 1914, Margaret Sanger found herself indicted for violating obscenity laws because she sent a pro-contraception newsletter in the mail. She fled the country for a time and then returned. In 1916, she opened a family planning and birth control clinic in Brooklyn. She was arrested not long after the clinic opened and later tried as both running a public nuisance and distributing prohibited contraceptives. A staunch opposer of abortion, she founded the American Birth Control League in 1921, which later became known as Planned Parenthood (there were other people involved in the push for birth control as a movement, such as Emma Goldman and Mary Dennett, incidentally). Perhaps it isn't a surprise that the Universal Film Manufacturing Company made a film loosely inspired by the proceedings. The film was directed by Lois Weber and Phillips Smalley, who were married at the time and worked on a variety of films together (in 1908 for example, he worked in the Gaumont Film Company). Of course, they were not listed as directors in the original credit (so yes, the rare no-director credit for a film), and they also served as producers and writers that was based on a story by Lucy Payton and Franklin Hall. Weber and Smalley returned to the subject of birth control with The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1917), which they each directed and starred in as a film about a birth control advocate imprisoned for her work. Sanger wrote and produced her own film about birth control that same year. Each film is lost, however (the latter was found by the Supreme Court to not fall under the protection of the First Amendment in free speech). The print I watched was a reconstruction (as funded by the Women's Film Preservation Fund of New York Women in Film and Television) that had been done in 2000 from several incomplete prints from America and Europe that saw a surviving post-production script used to help with ordering shots and give text to incomplete intertitles.
You know, it is not every day that you see a movie that has a lead character that believes in eugenics (incidentally, Sanger was a believer in negative eugenics, but I can think of worse things to be a part of, such as talking about eugenics in any kind of good light in the current day). That, or a 62-minute movie that doesn't even bother to give a name to one of the lead characters besides "Ms." Of course, this is also a movie that starts by talking about unborn children residing in "Heaven's gates" until they are either born on Earth (wanted or not) or they are sent back, complete with a shot used a couple of times over involving the gates. Honestly, I wish the 1917 film was the one we could see instead. Maybe there was something more compelling about a film that actually talked about birth control rather than the distinct anti-abortion film present here. It shows mostly affluent women going with abortions while an attorney discovers just why his wife has more parties than children around the house. The only time it really talks about birth control is when the doctor (early in the film) is asked about the pamphlets he is giving out (which say stuff such as: "when only those children who are wanted are born, the race will conquer the evils that weigh it down" or positing the question about if unwanted children born to ignorant people could suffer disease and asking for people to save the lives of mothers not willing to give birth to unwanted children), since his work usually takes him to the slums. Really it just invites the question as to why the rich are getting abortions in the first place rather than birth control, or why we are not focusing on a movie about the less fortunate dealing with unwanted children, but who knows. Power was a noted actor of his time, but be doesn't really help the role seem anything more than just an off-putting focus to have (i.e., who the hell wants a lead that likes eugenics?). The rest of actors are okay, but nothing inspiring (it's weird that Riaume was actually credited as "Mrs. Tyrone Power", since she was married to him at the time). It isn't particularly interesting as a look upon child care because it is more about the dangers of abortion (either as something the rich use or when someone dies from it) that is not nearly as compelling as the filmmakers think it is. The shots with the gates for unwanted children is just a weird way to convey the proceedings, but nothing tops an ending where a couple is just shown stewing alone with the children they could've had being ghosts. As a whole, it is a social drama that seems a bit too hollow to make the impact it thinks it wants beyond mild exploitation that probably could've been done better years later rather than this.
Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.
Next: Women's month ends with Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
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