The Baby of Mâcon (1993)

Director:

Peter Greenaway

Writer:

Peter Greenaway (writer)

Release Date:

17 September 1993 (UK)

Genre:

Drama | History

Plot:

A movie about the corruption in all levels of society. A baby is born from a supposed-to-be virgin woman...

Plot Keywords:

Baby | Nun | Childbirth | Infant Nudity | Blood

Awards:

1 win & 2 nominations

Cast

Julia Ormond	...	The Daughter
Ralph Fiennes	...	The Bishop's Son
Philip Stone	...	The Bishop
Jonathan Lacey	...	Cosimo Medici
Don Henderson	...	The Father Confessor
Celia Gregory	...	Mother Superior
Jeff Nuttall	...	The Majordomo
Jessica Hynes	...	The First Midwife (as Jessica Stevenson)
Kathryn Hunter	...	The Second Midwife
Gabrielle Reidy	...	The Third Midwife
Frank Egerton	...	The Prompter
Phelim McDermott	...	The First Tutor
Tony Vogel	...	The Father
Tatiana Strauss	...	The First Nun
Louisa Millwood-Haigh	...	The Second Nun

Also Known As:

Das Wunder von Macon (Germany)

Runtime:

122 min

Country:

UK | France | Germany | Belgium | Netherlands

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Certification:

Finland:K-16 (cut) (1996) | Finland:K-18 (uncut) (1993) | Australia:R | France:-16 | New Zealand:R18 | Portugal:M/18 | Spain:18 | Sweden:15 | UK:18 | Iceland:16

Filming Locations:

Germany

Company:

Black Forest Films

Trivia:

Director Peter Greenaway has said that one of the sources of inspiration for the film was the banning of the Benetton advertising poster campaign in the UK that featured pictures of a newborn baby, covered in blood and still attached to its umbilical cord. An outcry caused the posters to be removed. "What is so horrible about a newborn baby?" Greenaway wanted to know. "Why is that image (one that is seen many times a day in hospitals all over the country) so unacceptable, when much more horrific images are presented on television and the cinema, featuring murder and rape, but glamorized and made safe?" Thus Greenaway set out to make a film featuring murder and rape in which "nothing was glamorized and nothing was safe".

Movie Connections:

Featured in The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 2: Vaux to the Sea (2004)

Soundtrack:

L'Orfeo

Best movie of 1993

Easily eclipsing The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover as Greenaway's masterpiece. Ormond and Fiennes have never been better. Makes the other films released that year (The Firm, Sleepless in Seattle) look like lukewarm consomme at a spinsterish teaparty. Most powerful and horrifying rape scene since Bergman's The Virgin Spring. Surprised the Christian Coalition hasn't tried to get it banned: full frontal male nudity, infanticide, gang rape. What blood-and-thunder Elizabethan melodrama is all about.