The Most Wonderful Moment

The Most Wonderful Moment
The Most Wonderful Moment
	Film poster
Directed by	Luciano Emmer
Written by	Sergio Amidei; Luciano Emmer; Glauco Pellegrini; Ugo Pirro; Vasco Pratolini
Produced by	Giorgio Agliani
Starring	Marcello Mastroianni
Cinematography	Luciano Trasatti
Edited by	Jolanda Benvenuti
Music by	Nino Rota
Release date	21 March 1957;
Running time	92 minutes
Country	Italy
Language	Italian

The Most Wonderful Moment (Italian: Il momento più bello) is a 1957 Italian drama film directed by Luciano Emmer.^[1]

This drama deals with natural childbirth, and was described as "clinically pure, informative, edifying and, on occasion, tenderly dramatic". Pietro is in love with a nurse; they keep their affair secret until she falls pregnant. Worried that marriage will affect his career, she prepares for the upcoming childbirth.^[2]

Plot

In the maternity ward of a large Roman hospital, we witness the secret love between the young doctor Pietro Valeri and the nurse Luisa Morelli. Pietro has difficulty in making a career and hesitates to marry Luisa as he does not know what future he could offer her.

The situation seems to get worse when Luisa realizes she is expecting a baby. Pietro, always irresolute, seems to be in favor of a clandestine abortion, a solution that the girl refuses to consider. Luisa leaves the hospital and moves to her former colleague Margherita, who has set up on her own as a midwife. Margherita and Luisa organize pre-baby courses in which a revolutionary method of painless childbirth is developed, a technique learned in the same hospital where they worked. One of the young women assisted by Margherita is hospitalized in the ward where Pietro works and actually manages to give birth in conditions of relative serenity, transforming what mothers always considered "the worst moment" into the “most beautiful moment”: the episode comforts the doctor, who finally decides to marry Luisa and assist her in her maternity leave.