Alice Guy, who became Alice Guy Blaché after marriage to Herbert Blaché in 1907, was the first woman filmmaker and one of the first narrative filmmakers in the world. (We will refer to her as Guy, her first professional name, in order to avoid confusion with her filmmaker husband and business partner.) She told the story of making the first film with two shots, The Cabbage Patch Fairy (La Fée aux choux, 1896) by editing in camera, shooting one scene and then the other. She was apparently confusing two different movies she made not far apart, both about finding babies in cabbage patches using the same set and same actress, so the two-shot film in question is actually Midwife to the Upper Class (Sage-femme de première classe).
Actually, the 1896 version is lost but we have a remake from 1900 or 1901, running just over a minute, and then the third “midwife” version with two shots running closer to four minutes. The 1900 version shows the cabbage fairy pulling two wailing naked babies from behind large fake cabbages and laying them on the ground before striking more arty poses. As with many early films, the actor breaks the fourth wall to gesture at the viewer, including us in the action.
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