The Good, the Bad, and the Childless:

The Politics of Female Identity in

Maternit (1929) and la Maternelle (1933)
Cheryl A. Koos'
Associate Professor of History at California State University. Los Angeles

Abstract Tbis essay explores Jean Benot-Lvy and Marie Epstein's box-office success La
Maternelle and their lesser-known Maternit in the context of interwar debates over women's
roles in society. Reflecting natalist-famitiaiist conceptions of motherhood and femininity,
thefilmsmagnified tbree pervasive cultural icons in French social and political discourse: the
monstrous, childless "modern woman,"the exalted mother, and the "single woman" who fell
somewhere in the middle. As both products and vehicles of these tropes. La Maternetie and
Maternit not only illustrate how popular cinema disseminated and justified certain value-
laden assumptions about female identity in the late 1920s and early 1930s; they also reveal
the limitations of French feminism and socially-engaged, progressive art of the period.

Keywords Marie Epstein, feminism, French Third Republic, Jean-Benot Levy, La Mater-
nelle, Maternit, pronatalism

I n September 1933 Jean-Benot Levy and Marie Epstein's La Maternelle, the

story of an unmarried nursery school aide who finds happiness by caring
for the children of a Parisian slum, premiered in Paris to rapt audiences and
considerable critical acclaim. Building on the motif of their 1929 silent film
Maternit, which juxtaposed the unhappy existence of a childless bourgeois
woman with the joy of a prolific rural mother. La Maternelle stirred the inter-
est not only of popular audiences but also of social, political, and cultural
leaders. Appearing at a time of immense anxiety about women, children,
and the future of the French family and nation, botb films touched a nerve
in French culture. Concerns over a declining national birthrate and result-
ing depopulation had been building since the disastrous defeat of 1870-71
at tbe hands of the Prussians. In the wake of the Great War, these anxieties
reached a fever pitch as many commentators viewed dnatalit ana depopu-
lation as threats to France's economic health, military security, and ability
to compete against rival nation-states with aggressive pronatalist policies,
particularly Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.

Historical Reflections Volume 35, Issue 2, 5ummer 2009 Berghahn Journals /

^ ^"
doi: 10.3 ]67/hfrh2009.350202 IS5N 0315-7997 (Print), ISSN ]939-2419 (Online)

 Historians have thoroughfy docutnented the political rise and legisla-
tive successes of the French pronatalist and pro-family (natalist-familialist)
movement that emerged in the wake of the Franco-Prussian war, hut the
movetnent was hy no means limited to the political realm.^ Pronatalists'
gender politics filtered throughout French society in these decades. Dehate
ahom the hirthrate and, more pointedly, ahout what kind of men and women
France needed to assure a strong, moral future, echoed throughout French
art and popular culture. This essay explores Jean Benot-Lvy and Marie
Epstein's hox-office success La Maternelle and their lesser-known Maternit as
clear manifestations of this history, offering insight into how French natalist-
familialists of all political persuasions represented womanhood and feminin-
ity throughout the interwar period. As hoth products and vehicles of these
dehates about appropriate female gender roles, the films magnify pervasive
cuhural icons that played key roles in French social and political discourse
of this era: the monstrous, childless/emm^ moderne (modern woman), the
exalted mother, and xhe femme seule (single woman) who fell somewhere in
the middle hut could still he saved.'
In the filmmakers' widely-shared world view, French women had the
potential to be neglectful, harren demons if they shirked their social and
civic responsihility to raise families, or angels redeemed through the love
of children. As Benot-Lvy opined in his memoirs, this redemptive love of
children was the "sentiment that comes naturally to every woman."" Those
women who did not possess it were therefore unnatural. La Maternelle and
Maternit captured this central tenet of the era's gender politics. Convinced
of the incomparable educational value of cinema as well as the social and
moral responsihility of filmtnakers," Benot-Lvy had begun making films
about motherhood and children's welfare in the mid-1920s. The many doc-
umentaries that Benot-Lvy made with support from the left-leaning Cartel
des Gauches government and a host of public advocacy groups and think-
tanks included:
(The Future Mommy, 1925), an instructional short on
pre- and post-natal hygiene techniques commissioned by the Ministry
of Agriculture
L'AM^^i^w/oVir (Angel of the Home, 1928) and LeNiW (The Nest, 1928),
two instructional lms made under the auspi "es of the Muse Social
to cotnbat slums
two additional films co-directed with Marie Epstein, mes d'enfants
(Children's Souls, 1927), a docudrama showing the impact of insa-
lubrious urban housing conditions on children's health, and Peau de
pche (Peach Skin, 1928), a realist melodrama depicting the emotional
and physical healing of an orphan from the slums of Paris after his
adoption by a farm family.''
In their assessment of Benot-Lvy and Epstein's work, cinema scholars
have typically focused on issues of form and genre, particularly the interplay

Historical Reflections Summer 2009

between documentary and fiction in the context of Poetic Realism/ Draw-
ing on close formal analysis and feminist gaze theory, Sandy Flitterman-
Lewis contends tbat Epstein "shifts tbe focus from the traditional masculine
trajectory of Oedipal desire to desiring relations of tbe feminine (relations
between mothers and daughters in particular)."** Leaving aside questions of
psychoanalysis, I propose to read Maternit ana La Maternelle in the context of
interwar debates over women's roles in society. Doing so not only illustrates
how popular cinema disseminated and justified certain value-laden assutnp-
tions about female identity in the late 1920s and early 1930s; it also tells us
tnuch about tbe conservative blind spots of Frencb feminism and socially-
engaged, progressive art of the period.

Social Concern and Childless Women

In the aftermath of tbe Franco-Prussian war and census reports of 1876 and
1891 documenting a sharp decline In tbe national birtb rate, tbe bourgeois
femme nouvelle (new woman) who increasingly pursued education, employ-
ment, and social freedotn on ber bicycle was the suhject of much attention
from social critics and politicians.'' By the 1890s, these fears bad already led
to the establishment of several influential organizations, including the Al-
liance Nationale pour I'accroissernent de la population franaise (National
Alliance for French Population Growth), which actively lobbied tbe Frencb
state for measures that would promote the creation of large families. Such
proposals included not only government-financed family allowances, but
also a new voting system that would give Frencb men an additional vote for
each child they sired.
In tbe years preceding the First World War. the issue of depopulation
was overshadowed by the so-called "social question" of the working classes,
the spread of Marxism, and growing labor unrest, which in the eyes of bour-
geois political elites and social reformers threatened to destabilize the Third
Republic. While these class-based concerns continued following the war.
France's cataclysmic loss of approximately 1.5 million men and over 4 mil-
lion wounded catapulted gender issues and tbe declining birth rate back to
the fore of cultural politics. Many of the same politicians and intellectuals
who had focused their energies on the working classes became preoccupied
with combating depopulation and returning the new woman to the domes-
tic sphere for the good of the nation. Privately-funded organizations played
a key role in this initiative, as exemplified by the Cognacq-Jay Foundation,
which in 1922 established two annual cash prizes rewarding natalist-famil-
ialist practices. Tbe first, in tbe amount of 25.000 francs, was offered to mar-
ried couples who had nine children hefore tbe age of 42; a second award of
10.000 francs went to couples who produced five habies before the age of
30. Similarly, the Etienne Laniy Foundation awarded 10,000 francs to pro-
lific and poor Catholic French peasant families.'10

Koos The Good, the Bad, and the Childless

 whereas during the pre-war years only a minority of young bourgeois
women had sought social and economic independence, in the 1920s and
30s a growing number of working-class women also pursued this goal, giv-
ing birth to the new woman's younger sister, the jjmme moderne (modern
woman)." This modern woman drew criticism from politicians and social
critics across the French pofitical spectrum, but most vociferously from the
Right, which decried her short hair, waistless dresses, and bare knees. Lit-
erature and film often pejoratively contrasted her selfishness with the figure
of the virtuous, self-effacing mother and traditional notions of femininity,
lauding maternity as an antidote for the nation's ills.'^ Best-selling novels
such as Victor Margueritte's La Garonne (The Bachelor Girl, f 922) and Cle-
ment Vautel's Madame ne veut pas d'enfant (Madame Doesn't Want a Child,
1924) burned the emblematic opposition of the mother and the childless
woman into popular consciousness.''
The cuhural war pitting representations of the modern woman against
those of the mother was negotiated in part through a third figure of female
identity, ihe femme seule (the single woman) who more accurately embodied
the reality of many young women's existence. Already skewed by the war,
the ratio of women to men in the French population fell even more out of
balance in the 1920s and 1930s. By some estimates, there were as many as
3.5 million eligible single women under the age of thirty, but one-third fewer
men in the same category.'""
In this context. Maternit and La Maternelle can be viewed as part of a
larger cultural commentary on the plight of childless women who could not
have children, as opposed to those who refused to do so. If single women
were unable to marry, and thus could not fulfill their "natural" destiny of
being wives and mothers, or if married women were "voluntarily sterile,"
in the parlance of natalist-familialists, they could make no contribution to
society and secure their position as "true" women. Benot-Lvy and Epstein
answer this question by juxtaposing "good" and "bad" childless women.'^
Through their use of commonly understood, value-laden cultural icons, the
filmmakers clearly demarcate "proper" female conduct.

Maternit

The silent film. Maternit {\929), set in the rural countryside of central France,
chronicles the story of two very different women. Louise Viguier, the only
child of the proprietor of one of the most beautiful farms of the region, is a
frivolous modern woman. While having her choice of eligible bachelors who
woo her, she refuses to heed her father's wishes and choose a suitable hus-
band. Her counterpart, Marie, a hired farm hand, gives birth in the Viguier
pasture and becomes an unwed mother."'
Louise, not wanting such a woman working for her, chases Marie from
the farm. This leads her to return to the city, find the baby's father Pierre,

Historical Reflections Summer 2009

and marry him. Louise weds a traveling salestnan and also moves to the
city. Their business prospers, but Louise refuses motherhood in order to live
without inconvenience, much to the chagrin of her aging father. Marie, like
many other working-class mothers, is obliged to send her child to a wet
nurse. There the child becomes gravely ill and later dies in Marie's arms, ihe
death scene intercut with images of Louise rocking her trendy Pekingese
lap dog. Marie and Pierre's case is taken up by the altruistic Dr. Laurent,
who manages to get them positions at a model factory affiliated with the
local public assistance fund for large families. From then on, life improves
dramatically; the factory's machines even stop in order to allow mothers to
nurse new infants, and as the inter-titles inform us, "love and work are able
to co-exist." Soon Marie is the mother of six healthy children.
Louise's situation, on the other hand, deteriorates as the years pass. Her
husband, who is on the road much of the time, often leaves her lonely, un-
happy, and essentially a single woman. Upon her father's death, Louise re-
turns to the country to manage the farm, a victim of circumstance. She then
meets Marie's youngest son Jacquot, whom Marie sends each summer to
work in the fields. Louise, ever the selfish modern woman, is shown lav-
ishing attention on her sick dog rather than little Jacquol, who misses his
mother and cries at night. After Louise's dog dies and she burst into tears,
he gives her a kiss out of pity. Louise opens her arms and learns how to rock
him; for the first time, she experiences the love of a child and the pain of
having shunned motherhood. After a fann accident, Louise rescues the boy
from a ravine and nurses him back to health. Jacquot, though, pushes her
away, wanting his real mother. Louise takes him to Marie, who compre-
hends the irony. While rocking her son, she asks her old boss, "Now do you
understand what it is like to be a mother?"
Louise convinces Marie to help her manage the farm, but her penance
continues as she witnesses the birth o Marie's first grandchild. Feeling use-
less, isolated, and envious of Marie who is "beautiful because she tnothers,"
Louise wanders away from the farm in despair, stumbling upon a tree that
she learns is being destroyed because it no longer bears fruit. Louise, also
sterile, throws herself under the tree to meet a similar end. Dr. Laurent, the
same doctor who had rescued Marie years before and who had remained her
friend, revives Louise and nurses her back to health. Louise resists, claiming
that she has nothing and nobody to live for. Dr. Laurent tells her that "it's up
to you to love all the world's children;" at his suggestion. Louise takes a job
directing a nursery school for working mothers' children. Each night after
closing Louise is left alone, but "with her rests the consolation of the next
day's great task: to help mothers raise their children so thai life continues."'^
She "takes courage in the fact that she is helping tnothers in her special posi-
tion in the continuity of life."'"
The film's explicit promotion of motherhood and natalist-familialist
values were not lost on sympathetic social and political elites. Paul Haury,
one of the National Alliance for French Population Growth's leading propa-

Koos The Good, the Bad, and the Childless 7

gandists, strongly praised the film in the organization's official journal.'" In
his review Haury took the French press to task for ignoring the film, even
though it was performing "honorably" in large Patb theaters. Emphasizing
with ironic delight that the Italian government, rather than his own, was
using the film in its campaign against dnatalit ana depopulation, Haury re-
counted Maternit's 8 A\)r\] 1930 screening at the League of Nations'Interna-
tional Institute of Educational Cinema in Rome.
In addition to featuring Benot-Lvy, who at the time was General Sec-
retary of tbe Institute's French committee, the audience included a host of
prominent Italian officials, including the Justice Minister, Corporations Min-
ister, the Undersecretaries of National Education and the Interior, the direc-
tors of the National Office for Youth Education and the Office of Protection
of Children and Motherhood, and the French ambassador, de Beaumarchais.
Benot-Lvy introduced the film by declaring that it "reflects not only the
most powerful of human sentiments, but a sentiment that goes beyond hu-
manity because it comes from procreation, the very foundation of universal
life."'^" Echoing the director, Haury asserted that "by representing our morals
and our beautiful countryside," M//er/e encouraged tbe spectator "to take
out of the theater with him a pasture that nourished his spirit and left in his
heart the germ of a human and natural idea." In closing be proposed that
tlie French government adopt the Italian practice of offering tax breaks to
tbeaters showing films of "national interest."^'

La Maternelle

while Maternit is a ratber heavy-handed clarion call for prolific motherhood

that Epstein, berself a lifelong single woman, retrospectively dismissed as
"a very bad hlm,"^- La Maternelle offers a more subtle cautionary tale about
the results of unfettered reproduction through a social-realist portrayal of
a nursery school In a Parisian slum. In botb cases, however, tbe moralizing
attitude toward women remains: tbose who fulfill their "natural" calling as
attentive and loving mothers, literally or figuratively, are rewarded, while
tbose wbo eschewed it by abandoning or neglecting their children were
worthy of scorn.
Tbe film opens by introducing the audience to Rose, a young, well-edu-
cated bourgeois woman from a comfortable background wbo Is engaged to
be married. Following the death of her father and depletion of her dowry,
her fianc deserts her. Emotionally wounded and without material resources.
Rose is forced to look for work. Despite holding a brevet suprieur (the rough
equivalent of a bigh-school diploma, a relatively rare achievement for a
woman at the time), the only position she can find is as a femme de service
(all-purpose aide) in an cole maternelle (nursery school) in a poor section of
Montmartre. As she tells the school's female director, she is "willing do any-
thing as long as Ishel can start immediately."

Historical Reflections Summer 2009

 After arriving for her first day of work, it is apparent that Rose is gen-
erally kind and responsible, but has little experience with children. When
the head maid, Madame Paulin, asks her if sbe likes children, Rose shrugs
and says, "Of course, why?" As the children arrive shrieking, she suddenly
understands her boss's observation that she must if she is to keep her job. A
look of comprehension fills her face and, in the words of the original screen-
play summary, her "woman's heart opens itself to the love of children."-"
The children immediately attach themselves to Rose, who fiourishes in her
role as surrogate mother, thereby fulfilling her "tiatural" destiny as la mater-
nelle (the maternal one) and the double meaning of the film's title. Frotn the
neglected boy who does not know how to smile (Rose remedies that quickly
with her warmth) to Marie Curet, an older child whose mother is a street-
walker, the children in turn thrive in Rose's presence. Marie in particular
develops a strong attachment to her. After Marie's mother runs off with a
wanted criminal. Rose voluntarily takes Marie into her home.
Her devotion to the children eventually makes her attractive to a man,
school district superintendent Dr. Libois. At first he is hostile to Rose since
she has taken the position for which he had pre-selected another candidate.
To make matters worse, at their first meeting she spills a tnixture of water
and urine left from a child's accident on him. However, he is eventually won
over by her courage, devotion, charm, and beauty. Their mutual love of
the children at the school unites them and he eventually proposes marriage
after discovering that Rose is actually a bourgeois woman with an advanced
education and not a typical lower-class maid. Afraid that she will be again
be abandoned by her maternal figure, Marie attempts suicide by throwing
herself into the Seine. Rose, torn between her duty to Marie and love for
Libois, decides to reconcile the two sentiments: she will become Mme Libois
and remain the surrogate mother of all the schoolchildren. By persuading
Libois to adopt Marie and continuing her redemption, she fulfills her social
and civic duty as a wife, mother, and educator.^**
It is important to note that there are significant differences between the
1933 film and its source text, a Goncourt-prize-winning novel by Lon Fra-
pi published in 1904." Whereas Frapi deals primarily with class issues
the real-world education of a bourgeois woman among the working classes,
the effects of poverty on children, and the social and moral responsibilities of
the upper classesthe film shifts the focus to gender. In the novel there is no
romance and marriage between Rose and Dr. Libois; the story ends equivo-
cally, with Rose leaving at the end of the school year. Marie is a marginal
character whose mother is not mentioned.
The intensification of gender-related cultural debates and anxieties fol-
lowing World War I provides a framework for understanding the changes
that Benot-Lvy and Epstein brought to their version of La Maternelle, which
hinges on the creation of an unconventional, multi-layered love triangle.
At first the romance between Rose and Dr. Libois conflicts with the paren-
tal affection that links Rose to Marie. The seemingly inevitable loss of her

Koos The Good, the Bad, and the Childless 9

newfound surrogate mother, who in sharp contrast to her biological mother
bad seemed safe precisely because she did not have a man. leads the little
waif to attempt suicide. Tbis dramatic tension and its eventual resolution de-
pend on the three dominant interwar representations of women: tbe mod-
ern woman, the mother, and the single woman. In the film, we view and
comprehend these figures from tbe perspective of Marie, and by association,
through tbe other schoolchildren.
Throughout La Maternelle. Rose is contrasted with Marie's birth mother
who abandons her. Near the beginning of tbe film. Rose learns that Marie's
mother is the subject of much gossip in the neigbhorbood. As Rose's supervi-
sor whispers tbe scandalous news to Rose, the image dissolves to a close-up
of a woman's legs and feet clad in high beels and nylons with several runs
in them. As the shot pans up and back, we see a woman seductively dressed
in a short, low-cut dress and a tilted bat pacing on a street corner. Sbe stops,
takes a mirror from her purse, and reapplies ber bright lipstick. A man passes
in iront of her and sbe provocatively makes eye contact, tben follows him
visually in ber mirror. Though the episode lasts only eleven seconds, tbe
spectator is keenly aware from her telltale attire and body language that
the mother is a modern woman and a prostitute wbose aggressive, almost
predatory sexuality was often decried in popular and scientific discourse as
capable of poisoning society." The sequence was sufficiently disturbing to
be significantly cut from tbe American version of the film by tbe National
Board of Review." (See Figure 1 ).

Figure 1 Mdrie's mother entices a passerby

10 Historical Refleaions Summer 2009

 Subsequent scenes reinforce her status as a single, lower-class modern
woman whose child is a burden. After school she takes Marie to a concert at
a smoky dive as a "treat" for earning an award at school. Once in the club,
with Marie at her side, Madame Cureteyes heavy with mascara and
face heavily made-upfiirts with a nattily dressed man. While listening to
a scantily clad chanteuse, whose sheer blouse reveals a braless torso, the two
entwine their legs under the table and almost kiss.^" Adopting Marie's pierc-
ing gaze, here the camera emphasizes the prostitute-mother's destructive
moral and social infiuence. Totally self-absorbed and indifferent to the wel-
fare of her child, she exposes Marie to the seething lust of a shady character
who, we later learn, is a wanted criminal. As Marie desperately pulls her
mother out of the cabaret, the man follows. Madame Curet tells Marie to
go home without her; Marie complies and puts herself to bed. Her mother,
returning after she falls asleep, packs her make-up, as evidenced by a cloud
ot face powder, and plants a bright lipstick kiss on the Marie's forehead, visu-
ally and metaphorically scarring the innocent child's face. (See Figure 2) The
next day Marie discovers that her mother has abandoned her only because
she is questioned by the police. Through this plot device the film dramatizes
an issue that had long preoccupied French social scientists, as well as Benot-
Lvy himself, who wrote in his memoirs that the problem of abandon moral.

Figure 2 Marie's mother prepares to abandon her

Koos The Good, the Bad, and the Childless

n
the moral neglect of children, figured prominently in his decision to make
La Maternelle.^"^
Rose, on the other hand, expriences a rebirth t! rough her contact with
children, which gives her a sense of purpose in life, several scenes highlight
the contrast between Rose and Marie's birth mother. In the first. Rose visits
the mother's concierge, who frequently keeps the little girl and ironically
comments that Madame Curet is a "good mother because she always pays
me back." Having noticed another prostitute leading a customer upstairs.
Rose elects to take Marie home with her and fashions her a makeshift night-
shirt for the little girl (in white, of course). To express her gratitude, Marie
shares a lesson learned from her mother: applying spit to her eyebrows to
make herself more attractive. Tucked affectionately into bed, Marie tells Rose
she loves her and asks "who do you like best, classmate | Irma's mother or
mine?" Rose replies, "I love all mothers; a mother is the most wonderful
thing in the world. I love the mother of a little girl like you best of all."
When Rose is asked the next day by the school principal whether she
is adopting Marie, she proudly responds that she is, for her job has taught
her that children are innocent and that she has a duty toward Marie. After
all, she says, "T am all alone; I wanted to ... I am only trying to reach the
children." Later in the film, when Dr. Libois offers Rose the chance to start a
new life without Marie, she refuses to abandon the little girl and persuades
him to adopt her. In the end, Rose's devotion to Marie and the children of
the maternelle is precisely what makes her appealitig to Libois, since they pro-
vide the mechanism for her transformation from a lonely, financially ruined
femme seule at risk of becoming a streetwalker like Madame Coeuret into a
woman who is able to fulfill her "natural" social and civic destiny as a mother.
(See Figure 3). |
Alongside its stylized, melodramatic insistence on the virtues of moth-
erhood. La Maternelle offers viewers a starkly realistic, quasi-documentary
account of urban poverty and the suffering it causes by casting working-
class children from Montmartre and on-site filming. The co-directors even
lived in the neighborhood for several months to further ensure authentic-
ity. Replicated only by masters such as Jean Renoir and Jean Vigo,'" the
successful union of these usually distinct modes of filmmaking was rare in
1930s French cinema and made La Maternelle a hit. French cinema maga-
zines unanimously lauded the film, particularly the performance of lead ac-
tress Madeleine Renaud and the children." The readers of the popular film
weekly Pour Vous ranked it second on the "Best Film" list of 1933." The filtn
enjoyed an exceptionally long run in Paris, lasting from early September
1933 through early June 934. By one estimate, it drew over half a million
spectators in the capital and roughly an equal number in provincial France,
placing fourth in box-office receipts for the year."
Dubbed into Spanish, Dutch, German. Italian, and Japanese, La Ma-
ternelle received widespread international acclaim as well. American critics
hailed the subtitled version that played in New York as "a film of great sub-

12 Historical Reflections Summer 2009

Figure 3 Rose plays affectionate surrogate mother to Marie at school

tiety and almost unendurable power, of extraordinary tenderness, insight,

and tragic beauty" and "by any standard the best foreign language talker
shown in the U.S. in the past couple years."^" A British journalist called it
"the best work of direction seen in years," echoing Austrian reviewers who
labeled it "a masterpiece" and "ranking among the finest films ever made
anywhere." In Berlin, both critics and Nazi officials acknowledged it as "a
superb achievement." Notably, however, Nazi censors removed the Jewish-
sounding "Levy" from Benot-Lvy's name in the credits without the direc-
tor's permission. Benot-Lvy protested, and because the incident attracted
considerable attention, Joseph Goebbels reportedly ordered restoration of
the director's full name.^^
In France La Maternelle also reconciled bitter ideological adversaries who
normally took opposing views on socio-political issues. The Communist
daily L'Humanit called it "easily one of the best fihns we know" and praised
its socially engaged portrait of "proletarian childhood and the devotion of
the caregivers," chiding Benot-Lvy and Epstein for stressing prostitution
as the cause of child abandonment rather than "the capitalist system that
destroys the working-class family by obliging mothers as well as fathers to
leave home for the factory."'" Despite the Communists' strong endorsement
of women's right to work and denunciation of gender-based discrimination.

Koos The Good, the Bad, and the Childless 13

staying at home with their children remained an implicit ideal for women
who were mothers. The paper thus strongly recommended La Maternelle to
its readers, listing it as a "lm to see" (rather than a "film to boo") for thirty-
nine consecutive weeks." The Communist cultural magazine Regards also
ran a positive review and mentioned the film prominently in a four-part
investigative report titled "The Hospitals Where They're Killing Our Chil-
dren." Citing the case of Madeleine D., a three-year-old who was admitted
to a Paris hospital with a minor leg burn only to die of scarlet fever two
weeks later because of poor sanitary conditions and quarantine procedures,
the journalist reflected that stricter hygiene standards and more government
funding for public health care could have transformed Madeleine's tragedy
into a success story like little Marie's in the film.'*'
On the other end of the political spectrum, a reviewer for the Mauras-
sian weekly Grint^oire wrote:
1 defy the greatest actor in the world to capture my attention as fully as that
little girl fMarie] who answers the policeman's questions about her missing
mother. Great actors play roles; these children simply are. ...1 I don't be-
lieve tbat Madeleiue Renaud IRose] has ever been more compellingly gra-
cious or pitiable in her characteristically unaffected wjy. In the end. it's for
the best that the last few minutes of the film are not quite as good as what
precedes them, for one has time to wipe away one's tears.'''

Further still to the right, openly pro-fascist critics Robert Brasillach and Mau-
rice Bardche singled out La Maternelle for extended treatment in their no-
toriously tendentious, anti-Semitic History of Motion Pictures, arguing that it
was the first time that French cinema had "attained success through simple,
straightforward means ... |this film] easily surpasses anything that we have
seen for a very long time."**"
For their part, Benot-Lvy and Epstein never openly claimed any party
affiliation, instead espousing an apolitical commitment to promoting tradi-
tional gender roles, increased government support for public health, and
social reform in favor of France's poorest classes. In the context of the Great
Depression and intensifying social and ideological volatility, these values
were perceived as crucial to national unity and survival around the world.
Building on his work with the League of Nations during the interwar years,
in 1945 Benot-Lvy became Director of Audiovisual Information for the
United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration after he emigrated
to New York to escape deportation.'^'

Maternalism as Redemption

Reading M/^rH//^'against La Maternelle reveals continuities in the films' value-

laden representation of female identity as well as important differences in-
volving class and religion. While both films portray the modern woman as

14 Historical Reflections Summer 2009

selfisb and potentially destructive to society. Marie Curet's mother in La
Maternelle is even more exaggerated than Louise, owing to her status as a
working-class modern woman who, hooked on tbe sensual experience of
cabarets and seducing men. is presertted as enjoying her career as a street-
walker. In Maternit, however. Louise is very much a bourgeois modern
woman who relishes attending respectable cocktail parties and social climb-
ing. Sbe refuses to have a child hecause she disdains inconvenience, set-
tling instead for a toy dog. Here again the film reproduces a classic trope of
interwar natalist-familialist propaganda, which frequently showed modern
women doting on tbeir dogs (usually well-groomed poodles) to bigbligbt
tbe fact that they should instead be caring for children."^ While we do not
know wbat becomes of Marie's mother in La Maternelle, Louise suffers pain-
fully from ber choices. Already past her cbildbearing years, sbe resigns ber-
self to death out of loneliness and is resurrected morally and socially only by
serving as a day care provider who helps raise children whose birth mothers
work.
While there is a clear parallel in this regard between Louise and Rose,
the former serves as a cautionary figure whose rehabilitation is only partial.
In addition to adopting the abandoned little girl. Rose will presumably have
her own biological children witb Dr. Lihois. and she never suppresses her
"feminine nature" as does Louise or the prostitute tnother in La Maternelle.
Significantly, sbe becomes attractive to Dr. Lihois only after she asserts her
maternal instincts and proves herself wortb saving. Morally and narratively.
Rose more closely resembles the farm band Marie whom Louise evicts at
tbe beginning of tbe film. Yet Maternit contains a strongly Catholic motif of
sin. penance, and redemption tbat is less apparent in La Maternelle. Though
Marie does the right thing by marrying her baby's father after the fact, sbe
still tnust suffer tbe punishment of losing her sickly, illegitimate child. Her
symbolic debt paid, Marie is rewarded with six healthy, legitimate children
and happiness in traditional motherhood, thanks in part to financial assis-
tance fund provided hy a natalist organization.
By today's standards, tbe moralistic gender politics of Benot-Lcvy and
Epstein's films may seem indisputably anti-feminist and anti-progressive, but
in the context of interwar France that was not the case. When La Maternelle
premiered in late 1933. women still could not vote and required their hus-
bands' consent to apply for a job, claim their earnings, open a bank account,
and file suit in court. Feminism in France was generally understood as the
general promotion of women's well-being in society ratber tban as a specific
struggle for socio-political equality (especially suffrage) or liberation from
male domination, though those goals could enter into the equation. Apart
from a small handful of radical feminists such as Madeleine Pelletier and
Nelly Roussel, who condemned maternity as slavery and advocated absolute
sexual freedom, most Frencb women, including tbe vast majority of those
who identified themselves as feminists, did not contest their roles as wives
and mothers, which they perceived as an integral part of femininity."^

Koos The Good, the Bad, and the Childless 15

 A study based on the popular magazines Marie-Claire and Confidences,
both tailored to lower-level bourgeois and middle-class readers who made
up the majority of the era's cinema audiences, indicates that a majority of
French women supported the notion of "maternalist feminism" and took
pride in their roles as mothers, wives, and keepers of moral values.'" Editori-
als portrayed divorce as conditionally justifiable (in cases of abuse or infidel-
ity), as well as women's working outside the home, provided that it did not
interfere with maternal duty. Marie-Claire, the self-proclaimed "newspaper
of the modern woman" whose weekly print run approached 800,000 cop-
ies, posed the issue rhetorically: "Does a mother have the right to seek out
glory, to risk her life and to deprive her children of a maternal presence?
On the other hand, must an exceptional woman who is useful to her coun-
try renounce her plans to return to the sweet sanctuary of her family and
home?"''^ While recognizing that work was an economic necessity for many
women, both magazines consistently stressed the happiness and sense of sat-
isfaction brought by family life, reinforcing the notion that men and women
have a biological duty to each other and to the collective social body that
should be fulfilled through marriage and parenthood.

Conclusion

From a cultural and historical perspective, the unusually broad appeal of

La Maternelle underscores not only the power of maternity as an emblem
of social and moral strength, but also the long-standing French tendency to
conceptualize the health of the nation as family romance during times of po-
litical and social turmoil."'' Throughout the 1930s French consumers turned
to comforting images of good mothers to provide some semblance of order
and normalcy. In an attempt to reconcile competing images o female identity
on which the health of the nation seemed to rest, popular films attempted
to reconcile conduct that defied conventional notions of womanhood, By
saving lost modern women through the redeeming power of maternal love
and damning those who resisted their purportedly "natural" roles, Benot-
Levy and Epstein crafted representations of women that cut across typical
ideological divisions, linking the Marxist Left with tl e pro-Fascist Right and
the liberal Third Republic with the authoritarian Vichy regime.
When read in the context of twentieth-century French gender history.
La Maternelle and Maternit are compelling for the links the films highlight
between popular culture and the evolution of socio-political discourse. Sev-
eral years after La Maternelle's release, the assumptions about proper wom-
anhood articulated in its images became part of French statutory law in the
1939 Family Code; four years later French courts resurrected the guillotine to
execute women who violated their "natural" maternal sentiments fiy perform-
ing abortion, which was formally classified as "a crime against the State."''
The most repressive components of gender politics gradually disappeared from

16 Historical Reflections Summer 2009

French culture following World War II, with the legalization of female con-
traception and abortion, the passage of laws promoting gender parity in the
workplace, and equal representation of male and female candidates on elec-
tion ballots. Yet, certain aspects of the interwar natalist-familialist mentality,
most notably the generous system of family allocations first proposed by the
National Alliance for French Population Growth, still survive today as an
integral part of social democracy in France and throughout Europe.

Notes

1. A version of this article previously appeared as "Good Children. True Women,

and Social Demons: The Cultural Politics of La Maternelle (1933)." Film and His-
tory (2003 CD-ROM annual). I would like to thank Clark Davis. Rennie Schoep-
flin. Caria Biltel, and Lisa Cody for their comments on earlier drafts of this essay.
Brett Bowles provided invaluable help in locating sources when I began this
research as well as superb comments and editorial suggestions.
2. For discussions of the importance of the birthrate and ihe family as cultural
and political concerns in the Third Republic and Vichy, see. for example, Karen
M. Offen, "Depopulation, Nationalism, and Feminism in Fin-de-sicle France,"
American Historical Review 89 ( 1984): 648-76; Joshua Cole, The Power of Large
Numbers: Population. Politics, and Gender in Nineteenth Century France (Ithaca, NY,
2000); Jean Pedersen, "Regulating Abortion and Binh Control: Gender, Medi-
cine, and Republican Politics In France 1870-1920," French Historical Studies t9
(1996): 673-98; Cheryl A. Koos. "Gender, Nationalism, and Anti-individualism:
The Pronatalist Backlash against the Femme Moderne. 1933-1940," French His-
torical Studies 19 (1996): 699-723; and "'On les aura!': The Gendered Politics of
Abortion in France, 1938-44." Modern and Contemporary France 7 (1999): 21-33;
Miranda Pollard. Reign of Virtue: Mobilizing Gender in Vichy France {Chicago. 1998);
Stephen L. Harp, Marketing Michelin: Advertising and Cultural Identity in Twentieth-
Century France (Baltimore, 2001). 126-55; Francine Muel-Dreyfus, Vichy and the
Eternal Feminine, trans. Kathleen A. Johns (Durham, NC, 2001); Kristen Strom-
berg Childers, Fathers. Families, and the State in France 914-1945 (Ithaca, NY,
2003).
3. Mary Louise Roberts, Civilization without Sexes: Reconstructing Gender in Postwar
France. 97-1927(Chicago. 1994).
4. Jean Benot-Lvy, Art of the Motion Picture, trans. Theodore R. Jaeckel (New York,
1946), 149.
5. Valerie Vignaux has written extensively on Benot-Lvy's career and approach
to filmmaking: Jean Benot-Lvy. ou le corps comme utopie: une histoire du cinma du-
cateur dans l'entre-deux-guerres en France (Paris, 2007); "Jean Benot-Lvy, l'igno-
rance est une maladie contagieuse, ou le cinma auxiliaire de la science." In Sur
e pas de Marey. science(s) et dnema. ed. Thierry Lefebvre et al. (Paris, 2004), 283-
309; and "Un cinma 'ducateur' dit de 'propagande sociale' dans l'entre-deux-
guerres en France, ou des images pour la Rpublique," in Vne histoire du cinma
de propagande, de la premire guerre jusqu' lafinde la guerre froide, ed. Jean-Pierre
Bertin-Maghit (Paris, forthcoming). It should be noted that while Vignaux situ-
ates Benot-Lvy's work within a problematiqtte nataliste, she maintains that he

Koos The Good, rhe Bad, and the Childless 17

 offers ways in which "women can reconcile motherhood and money-making
activities." See particularly, "Un cinma 'ducateur',' 7 (typescript).
6. For discussion of these films, see Vignaux, Jean Beno: Levy, ou le corps comme uto-
pie. 90-99. On The Future Mommy, see also Alison Levine, "Projections of Rural
Life; the Agricultural Film Initiative in France, 1919-1939,' Cinema Journal 43
(2004): 83-85.
7. See for example Dudley Andrew, Mists of Regret: Culture and Sensibility in Classic
French Film (Princeton, NJ, 1995), 203-5; Alan Williams, Republic of Images: A
History of French Filmmaking (Cambridge, MA, 1992), 195-98; John W. Martin,
The Golden Age of French Cinema. 929-1939 (Boston, 1983). 108-11; Raymond
Chirat, Le Cinma franais des annes trente (Paris, 1983), 21.
8. Sandy Flitlerman-Lewis, To Desire Differently: Feminism and the French Cinema, 2'"'
ed. (Urbana, IL, 1996), 33. The book also includes a detailed assessment of Ep-
stein's career, which included acting, producing, screenwriting, directing, and
serving as a curator at the Cinematheque Franaise.
9. See Annelise Maugue, L'Identit masculine en crise au tournant du sicle (Paris, 1987);
Michelle Perrot, "The New Eve and the Old Adam: French Women's Condition
at the Turn of the Century,' in Behind the Lines: Gender and the Tlw World Wars,
ed. Margaret Hlgonnet et al. (New Haven, CT, 1987), 51-60; Debora Silverman,
"The 'New Woman': Feminism and the Decorative Arts in Fin-de-sicle France,"
in Eroticism and the Body Politic, ed. Lynn Hunt, (Baltimore, MD, 1991), 144-63;
Silverman, Art Nouveau in Fin-de-Sicle France: Politico. Psychology and Style (Berke
ley, 1989) for the debate on \e femme nouvelle in the Belle poque; Mary Louise
Roberts, Disruptive Acts: The New Woman in Fin-de-Sicle France. (Chicago, 2002);
Patricia Tilburg, "Colette: The New Woman Takes the Stage in Belle poque
France," in The Human Tradition in Modern France, ed. Cora Grnala and Cheryl A.
Koos (Lanham, MD, 2008), 75-89; Tilburg, "Earning Her Bread: Mtier, Order,
and Female Honor in Colette's Music Hall, 1906-1913," French Historical Studies
28 (2005): 497-530; Andrea Mansker, "Vive 'Mademoiselle'!' The Politics of
Singleness in Earfy Twentieth-Century French Feminism," Feminist Studies 33
(2007): 632-58; Mansker. "'Mademoiselle Arria Ly Wants Blood!' the Debate
over Female Honor in Belle Epoque France,' French Historical Studies 29 (2006)
621-47.
10. See Andres Reggiani, "Birthing the French Wt-lfare State: Political Crises, Popu-
lation, and Public Health, 1914-1960" (Ph.D. Dissertation, State University of
New York at Stony Brook, 1998), 133. See also Stephen Harp, Marketing Michelin.
139 and 312 n. 34. For information on the Cognacq-Jay foundation, see http://
www.cognacq-jay.fr.
11. For discussion of this transition, see Mary Louise Roberts, Civilization without
Sexes: Reconstructing Gender in Postwar France. /97-927 (Chicago, 1994), 19-20.
12. For another analysis of interwar gender anxieties, Sn Reynolds, France Between
the Wars: Gender and Politics (London, 1996).
13. For an insightful commentary on the gender politics of Vautel's novel, sec Rob-
erts, Civilization. 131-37. On the film adaptation of the novel released in 1932,
see Colin Crisp, Genre. Myth, and Convention in the French Cinema, 1929-1939
(Bloomington, IN, 2002), 315.
14. Roberts, CiVifcaiwi, 149-213,
15. Fora discussion of He7?e( 1936), their Rim about a 'good' single woman with a
child, see Flitterman-Lewis, To Desire, 162-63.

Historical Reflections Summer 2009

 16. Fora detailed discussion o Maternit, see Flitterman-Lewis, To Desire, 154-57 and
Vignaux, Jean Benot-Lvy, 103-05.
17. For an extensive illustrated publicity treatment of Maternit, see Bibiliothque
d'Arsenal, Fonds Rondel, Dossier "Benot-Lvy / Epstein 1929: La Maternit."
Fernand Weiil Films, Aug. 1929.
18. Flitterman-Lewis, To Desire. 155. Fiitierman-Lewis contends that Maternit, like La
Maternelle, demonstrates Marie Epstein's feminist formulations of female desire.
19. Paul Haury, "Afflfmi/i/. histoire difiante d'un beau film franais," Revue de l'Al-
liance Nationale pour l'accroissement de la population franaise, no. 2 ! 5 (June 1930):
176-78.
20. Quoted in Vignaux, Jean Benot-Lvy, ou le corps comme utopie, 120.
21. Haury. "Maternit."
22. Quoted in Fiitterman-Lewis, To Desire, 1 53.
23. Bibiliuihque du Film, Archives de distributeur, Fonds Collection Jaune. CJ
0942 B125.
24. For other film summaries, see Cinmonde, 12 Oct 1933 and Pour vous. 12 Oct
1933.
25. See Lon Frapi, La Maternelle (Paris, 1904). For analysis of this and Frapi's
other writings about single women, see Genevive Fraisse, Les Femmes et leur
histoire (Paris, 1998), 463-83.
26. See for example Paul Haury, "Votre bonheur, jeunes filles," Revue de l'AUiance
Nationale, Qct. 1934. For a discussion of women's clothing and hairstyles as cul-
tural markers of class and sexuality, see Roberts, CivHization, 66-69,
27. Flitterman-Lewis, To Desire, 2\^.
28. This scene was also cut by American censors. See Flitterman-Lewis, To Desire,
193-96 for a detailed formal analysis.
29. Benot-Lvy, Art of the Motion Picture. 149. For more on tbe issue of abandon
mora, see Sylvia Schfer, Children in Moral Danger and the Problem of Government
in Third Republic France (Princeton, NJ, 1997).
30. Andrew, Mists of Regret. 201-5; Fliuerman-Lewis, To Desire. 178-79.
31. See for example, Claude Bernier, "La vedette de 'La Maternelle': Madeleine Re-
naud," Cin-Miroir. 3 November 1933; Georgette Murell, "Chez les gosses avec
Madeleine Renaud," Cinmonde, 16 February 1933; Lucienne Escoube, "Made-
leine Renaud 'La Maternelle'," Pour Vous. 7 September 1933; Janine Anscher,
"Comment Benot-Lvy ralisa 'La Maternelle'," Pour Vous, 7 December 1933;
"Studios en plein air: on tourne 'La Maternelle'," Pour Vous. 9 February 1933;
"Les enfants devant l'appareil," Journal de la femme. 26 August 1933); "Ceux qui
font les vedettes: l'idal fminin des metteurs en scne," Journal de la femme. 29
July 1933.
32. Pour Vous. 1 March 1934, cited in Crisp, Genre. Myth, and Convention. 301.
33. Crisp, Genre. Myth, and Convention, 316, 336.
34. New York Times. 15 Qctober 1935 and Variety, 23 October 1935. Other positive
American reviews appeared in Newsweek, 26 October 1935; The Literary Digest,
26 October 1935; The Nation. October 1935; New Republic, 30 October 1935. The
French film magazine, Cin-Miroir, additionally hailed its success in New York.
See Jean Vignaud, "Notre opinion: un beau succs," Cin-Miroir 22 November
1935.
35. Quoted in The Literary Digest, 26 October 1935. For coverage of the incident, see
Jean Vignaud, "Notre opinion: un incident," Cin-Miroir, 9 February 1934.

Koos The Good, the Bad, and the Childless 19

36. "La Foire aux lms: La Maternelle," L'Humanit. 8 September 1933.
37. "Sur l'cran cette semaine: films voir / films siffler." L'Humanit. 15 Septem-
ber 1933 tbrough 8 June 1934.
38. "La Maternelle." Regards. October 1933; "Les Hpitaux o l'on tue nos enfants; la
mort df Madeleine D.,' Regards. 9 March 1934.
39. Andr Mcnault, "La Maternelle." Gringoire, 15 September 1933.
40. Maurice Bardcbe and Robert Brasillach. The History of Motion Pictures, trans. Iris
Berry (New York, 198), 338-40.
41. Suzanne Langlois. "La coniribution du dnema documentaire en faveur de l'Ad-
ministration des Nations Unies pour les secours et la reconstruction (UNRRA).
1944-1947," in Lendemains de guerre, ed. Roch Legault and Magali Deleuze
(Montreal, 2006), 129-47.
42. For one example, see the illustrated pampblet by Alliance head Fernand Boverat.
Comment nous vaincrons la dnatalit (Paris. 1938).
43. Elinor Accampo. Blessed Motherhood. Bitter Fruit: Nelly Roussel and the Politics of
Female Pain in Third-Republic France (Baltimore, MD. 2006); Christine Bard, .es
Filles de Marianne: histoire des fminismes, 1914-1940 (Paris, 1995), esp. 11-29 and
209-26; Laurence Klejman and Florence Rochefort. L'Egalit en marche: e fmi-
nisme sous la Troisime Rpublique (Paris, 1989). 326-37. For extended discussions
of maternalist feminism in the interwar period, see Anne Cova. Maternits et
droits des femmes en France (XlXe et XXe sicles} (Paris. 19' 7) and Au service de l'glis
de la patrie et de la famille: Femmes catholiques et maternit sous la lile Rpublique
(Paris. 2000).
44. Marie-Genevive Chevignard and Nicole Faure. "Systme de valeurs et de rf-
rences dans la presse fminine,' in Ren Rmond and Janine Bourdin. La France
et ies Franais en /9.3 (Paris. 1978). 43-57.
45. Quoted in Chevignard and Faure. "Systme," 47.
46. On this point, see Lynn Hunt, The Family Romance of the French Revolution (Berke-
ley. CA, 1992); Raoul Girardet, Mythes et mythologies politiques (Paris. 1986).
70-92.
47. Francis Szpiner, Une affaire de femmes: Paris 943, excution d'une avorteuse (Paris,
1986). 31. See also Miranda Pollard. Reign of Virtue: Mobilizing Gender in Vichy
France (Chicago. 1998) and Cheryl A. Koos. "'On les aura!': The Gendered Poli-
tics of Abortion in France. 1938-44." Modern and Contemporary France 1 (1999):
21-33.

20 Historical Reflections Summer 2009

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