The Little Match Seller is a 1902

1902 in film

The year 1902 in film involved some significant events.-Events:*March 10 - Circuit Court's decision disallows Thomas Edison from having a monopoly on motion picture technology....

 British short

Short subject

A short film is any film not long enough to be considered a feature film. No consensus exists as to where that boundary is drawn: the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes or less, including all...

  silent

Silent film

A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...

 drama film

Drama film

A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...

, directed by James Williamson

James Williamson (film pioneer)

James Williamson was an early film developer and film director.-Biography:...

, retelling the classic Hans Christian Andersen

Hans Christian Andersen

Hans Christian Andersen was a Danish author, fairy tale writer, and poet noted for his children's stories. These include "The Steadfast Tin Soldier," "The Snow Queen," "The Little Mermaid," "Thumbelina," "The Little Match Girl," and "The Ugly Duckling."...

 fable of the sad life and tragic death of a little match seller. This major fiction film of the period was, according to Michael Brooke of BFI Screenonline, "a serious attempt at depicting a person's inner emotional life on film through purely visual means (there is no onscreen text of any kind), using trick effects not to provoke laughter but for serious dramatic reasons."

Review

BFI Screenonline reviewer Michael Brooke states out that the film, "shows a similar interest in the plight of the downtrodden," but is, in most other respects, "a very different type of film," to the director's A Reservist, Before the War and After the War and The Soldier's Return (both 1902), which, "were inspired by the experience of soldiers returning from the only recently concluded Boer War," whilst this film, "is a very faithful adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen's 1846 fable (which is brief enough to suggest that the original could have been read aloud during screenings), and instead of the other films' scrupulously realistic presentation, Williamson here resorts to numerous special effects, mostly in the form of superimpositions." "However, these are entirely true to the spirit of the original story, whose dramatic and emotional centerpiece is the series of visions seen by the little match seller when striking matches to keep warm," and the film, "is as ambitious and innovative as A Reservist." The director, he concludes, "would continue to explore this new ground in later films such as The Old Chorister (1904)."