A couple of recent examples of how having children can intensify one's perceptions.
D.O.A.(1950) is an impressive film noir by director Rudolph Mate. Edmond O'Brien plays a character on vacation in San Francisco who suddenly does not feel well and pops in to see a doctor who examines him and announces "you've been murdered." He has been given a slow-acting poison which has now penetrated his system and he only has a few days left to live. He runs down the street in an unbelieving panic and when he stops to take a breath he rescues a wayward ball for a little girl and sees a loving couple on the street. The look on his face indicates quite clearly his distress; we know he has been dragging his feet about marrying his girlfriend and one knows what he must be feeling: that he now will never marry or have children because he will soon be dead. No words are spoken; Mate trusts one to understand O'Brien's despair.
Scapegoat, directed by Robert Hamer in 1959, has Alec Guinness playing two roles, a French count and a British teacher who looks like the count and whom the count tricks into taking his place with the count's family. This unlikely story, more effective in the Daphne Du Maurier novel, works to the extent it does because the British teacher, a lonely bachelor, is obviously so enthralled by his new "daughter", played charmingly by Annabel Bartlett (for whom I could find no other acting credits). Before I had children I missed out almost totally on this aspect of the film, which gives it a more emotional validity.
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