Window Water Baby Moving (1959)
Directed by Stan Brakhage
On a winter's day, a woman stretches near a window then sits in a bathtub of water. She's happy. Her lover is nearby; there are close ups of her face, her pregnant belly, and his hands caressing her. She gives birth: we see the crowning of the baby's head, then the birth itself; we watch a pair of hands tie off and cut the umbilical cord. With the help of the attending hands, the mother expels the placenta. The infant, a baby girl, nurses. We return from time to time to the bath scene. By the end, dad's excited; mother and daughter rest. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2013.
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What critics compared Window Water Baby Moving to
Scorsese hits the genre tendencies aggressively here, more than any other Scorsese film I can think of, and enters into only one or two moments that defy the norms: one moment in particular, an intimate memory of Teddy’s wife giving him a tie, is shown in sweet but abstract close ups and cut in a way reminiscent of Stan Brakhage’s Window Water Baby Moving but in color (and without live birth—a possible inside reference to later events).