The Mystery of Marriage
The Mystery of Marriage
| 17 September 1931 (USA)
The Mystery of Marriage Trailers

The courtship rituals of animals and plants are compared to those of contemporary society, with educational and frequently humorous results.

Reviews
Exoticalot People are voting emotionally.
Voxitype Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.
KnotStronger This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.
Lachlan Coulson This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.
Igenlode Wordsmith This educational film (by the director Mary Field, who produced other nature documentaries in a similar wry style) sets out to impart information on the reproductive habits of various creatures to the young mind, thanks to some painstaking time-lapse photography and some close-up film of various animals -- although the more exotic species appear to have been filmed in the Zoo! So far as this goes it is reasonably informative and interesting, and I encountered a few facts about plant strategies for seed dissemination that I hadn't known before. (I did also spot a couple of errors of fact: so far as I'm aware, frogs are not reptiles and alligators are actually very attentive mothers...) However, the novel and memorable twist here is to reverse the usual sex-education trope in which "the birds and the bees" stand proxy for human activity; in this film, animal behaviour is illustrated by using human examples. The result is often very funny, as in the cuts between praying-mantis females and the icy glances of rival Society ladies, or between the male preening himself and the young man stroking his moustache.