The Wife’s Crusade or Unwelcome children
One of the Eastman House’s darkest treasures is this extraordinary film dealing with stands on abortion, starring four of German silent cinema’s biggest stars: Conrad Veidt and Werner Krauss (both from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari), Maly Delschaft (The Last Laugh), and Ernst Lubitsch’s favorite leading man Harry Liedtke (Madame Dubarry, Sumurun, The Wives of Pharaoh).
This story of a crusading…
Fertility. The problem with motherhood - A film by Van de Velde.
The young, modern-minded physician Dr. Maerker comes in a small factory town and is appalled by the prevailing social conditions. The workers' families live under poor conditions and can barely feed their many children. Therefore Maerker wants to enlighten them by a lecture on contraception, but encounters fierce resistance of his conservative boss, Dr. Witte who wants to prevent the lecture toge…
Misery and Fortune of Women
Part One A song in praise of the doctor’s skill:
Sergej Eisenstein’s and Grigori Alexandrov’s film Women in Distress – Women’s Happiness was shot in Switzerland. It grew out of the already passé genre of German "hygiene" films that profited from "informing" the public on sexual matters; but Misery and Fortune of Women, by two of the most celebrated Soviet film artists, hired by producer Lazar We…
