Komm nur, mein liebstes Vögelein... (1968)

Presented by Gerd Baltus, the film offers an entertaining and uninhibited portrayal of the history of sexual mores throughout human history. Come, My Dearest Little Bird purports to be a treatise on the development of human desires over the centuries. The depictions of sexual behavior in each era are said to be scientifically documented. In all, twelve periods are examined from the perspective of sexual history. For example, a blonde couple romps through the Germanic undergrowth. We learn that the lovemaking of our forefathers was rough but warm-hearted, and free of any false modesty, until the first Christian missionaries introduced new standards of morality. Since then, the film insinuates, people have had a “strained relationship” with their instincts. Sensual, romantic scenes from the age of courtly love follow, along with glimpses of sexual greed in the Middle Ages and its bathing games, insights into the anti-sexual morality of the witch-hunt era, and scenes of the Renaissance’s sensual intoxication and the Rococo’s frivolity and lustfulness. Then, as the following episodes show, the nineteenth century began, with its sexually repressive morality, followed by the modern age—the twentieth century—with obligatory sex during the era of fascism and the subsequent sexual revolution, complete with consumer sex and sexual ideology.