Details

Release year: 1993

Storyline

Plagued with infertility, the inhabitants of Mâcon are naturally involved in the spectacle that is a masque about the miracle child born to a virgin mother.

Top credits

Directors

Peter Greenaway

Writers

Peter Greenaway

Cast

Julia Ormond — The Daughter
Ralph Fiennes — The Bishop's Son
Philip Stone — The Bishop
Jonathan Lacey — Cosimo Medici

See all 35 credits →

Did you know

• 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".

• Director Peter Greenaway originally wanted to shoot some scenes in the famous Cologne Cathedral, but couldn't: "...we had planned to use the cathedral of Cologne, but two days before we began our preparations, The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989) was shown on German television and the archbishop immediately forbade us from entering the cathedral site!" The scenes were finally shot in the remodeled Old Church of Amsterdam ("Oude Kerk"). ["P.G.: Interviews", 2000]

• North American distributors refused to take the film in due its controversial subject matter. As a result, The Baby of Mâcon (1993) is officially unavailable in any format in the US. Amazon has this movie as of 2021.