Madame X (1929 film)

Madame X is a 1929 American PreCode drama film directed by Lionel Barrymore, and starring Ruth Chatterton as a fallen woman with an outofwedlock child. The film is based on the 1908 play Madame X by French playwright Alexandre Bisson 18481912.

By chance, the lawyer assigned to her turns out to be her own son, on his first case. He is puzzled and frustrated when she refuses to defend herself in court. During the trial, her husband shows up in support of his son. When she sees that he recognizes her and is about to speak out, she makes an impassioned plea, not for mercy but for understanding of what drove her to murder. As she had intended, the hidden message silences Louis. When Jacqueline faints from the strain, she is carried into a private chamber. There, she kisses her stillunaware son and dies.The story had been filmed before by Goldwyn Pictures in 1920 with Pauline Frederick. This was four years before the merger of Goldwyn with two other film studios that led to MGM. MGM inherited the screen rights to the story following the 1924 merger. ........

Source: Wikipedia