The Blue Bird (1940)

 

Toward the end of Walter Lang's 1940 fantasy The Blue Bird, Shirley Temple, playing a bratty German peasant girl in search of the elusive bringer of happiness, ends up in the Land of the Future with her younger brother, played by fellow child actor Johnny Russell (who, interestingly, like Temple ending up working in the State Department many years later).

In the Land of the Future, they visit with unborn children waiting to be called by Father Time to board the boat fo Earth and deposited into the loving arms of parents waiting for a bundle of joy.

Brother and sister watch as two older unborn children who have fallen in love while waiting for their turn to be born react when one is called to board and the other is not. They weep and wail over being parted. It's all too much for the bratty peasant girl, who is shown with tears streaming down her face.

When she and her brother magically arrive back home (not unlike the sepia-toned conclusion to the Wizard of Oz, the film that The Blue Bird was made to compete with in theaters), the children are no longer spoiled and entitled but bright-eyed and loving. The transformation is quite remarkable!

There's just no end to the wonderful things fixating on the unborn can do!