Madame wünscht keine Kinder (1926)

Paul Le Barroy is a young lawyer, spoiled by life and his house servants, and blessed with an exceptionally lovable girlfriend named Louise Bonvin—in short, he has everything he needs to be truly happy. In a fit of high spirits, the confirmed bachelor gets the idea that it is time to finally get married. His servant is just as astonished by this change of heart as Paul’s friends are. Paul already has everything—so why does he want to turn his life upside down? It is not long before he finds a young woman from a distinguished family with whom he can carry out his plan. Her name is Elyane Parizot; she is lively and loves dancing. She is also a great spender, lavishing vast sums on clothes and furs. Elyane also has a very young sister, Lulu, and her mother is an equally enthusiastic and indefatigable Charleston dancer. It is not long before Paul and Elyane are engaged. His former girlfriend Louise, a respectable, middle-class performer who would no longer have fitted into Paul’s idea of a sophisticated life, is left behind. She is an exceptionally sweet and decent girl, though perhaps a little too proper, and when Paul visits to say goodbye, she makes it as easy as possible for him to leave the life they had shared. Paul soon experiences the downsides of his turbulent relationship with his future wife. Elyane’s idea of life is to live in the fast lane: partying is a constant fixture. They go to bars and dance the Charleston wildly to jazz bands; champagne flows freely. Even on their honeymoon, which takes the young couple to Venice, Rome, the pyramids in Egypt, and the Swiss mountains, Elyane’s hunger for pleasure sets the pace around the clock. Her no less energetic sister Lulu and her dance-crazy mother only encourage Elyane’s partying, while good-natured Paul gradually finds himself longing for the peaceful life he shared with Louise. To avoid curbing Elyane’s uninhibited approach to life, her mother even demands that her son-in-law swear never to turn his bride into a proper little housewife. She must keep both her figure and her carefree spirit. Or, in other words, as the film’s title puts it: “Madame Wants No Children.” But one evening Paul has had enough of it all. When some fellow from the provinces makes advances to all three women in a nightclub and treats the ladies as if they were “for sale,” Paul confronts him. The man is astonished that Paul has intervened: to him, the heavily made-up, low-cut Elyane, Lulu, and their mother, in their ultra-short skirts, are clearly fast women—“cocottes” and “tarts”—who deserve such treatment. Then the penny drops for Paul. The stranger is right! The endless nightclub visits, the same jazz music all the time, and the never-ending parties are piling up his bills, leaving him constantly short of sleep and deeply dissatisfied with his life as it is. Elyane’s resistance to motherhood also gives him pause. Paul takes his wife to task and gives her a stern moral lecture. This cannot go on, he tells her. Furious, Paul leaves their apartment … and goes to Louise’s. Elyane has no idea what is going on. She assumes that her husband, whose outbursts of anger are unfamiliar to her, will soon calm down and has already gone to bed. But the next morning the marital bed is empty, and Elyane assumes that Paul is cheating on her. She searches his desk for clues. There she finds a business card from Louise Bonvin, with a loving farewell message. Elyane is consumed with jealousy. She takes a pistol from the desk and rushes to Louise’s apartment. Paul did not find Louise there, because she is away at the moment. So he spent the night thinking about his marriage and, in the morning, went to court, as lawyers do. When Elyane arrives, Louise is just coming home. Elyane points the gun at her, but Louise calms her down—in a figurative sense—because her kindness is literally “disarming.” Meanwhile, Elyane’s maid informs Paul of the dramatic events. He races to Louise’s apartment, but instead of finding a corpse, he finds two cheerful women peacefully chatting about the latest trends in fashion over a bowl of sweets. Louise has managed to convince Elyane that she poses no threat to her marriage to Paul, since she herself intends to get married. Louise even talks Elyane out of her aversion to having a child. And so, nine months later, the news is: Madame has had a baby!