For the next month, I'll be heading back in time, checking out 'old' Christmas movies. From my limited research, I ‘m pleased to discover that loads of the earliest ever films were yuletide-themed, which just goes to show the magical power Christmas has had over the imaginations of viewers and filmmakers alike for over 120 years.
An internet search reveals that Youtube hides a wondrous treasure trove of some of the oldest Christmas narratives ever committed to film but, of course, a lot of them, especially the really early ones, are rather short and don’t come anywhere close to qualifying as ‘feature length’. Thing is, with so many of these important cinematic artefacts at my fingertips, it seems wrong now not to include these early movies in my ill-advised cinematic flight of fancy. With this in mind I decide, what the hell, to make up for them being a bit short, I’ll just watch a whole bunch of them.
First up, believed to be one of the earliest Christmas films on record and one of the oldest films period is Santa Claus, a silent short from 1898 that is, according to our good friends at Wikipedia, “believed to be the cinema’s earliest known example of ‘parallel action’ (switching back and forth between scenes) and ‘double exposure techniques (layering one image over another one)’”. These are things that modern movie goers have seen a million times, but must have blown the tiny minds of 1890s movie fans. I try to keep this sort of thing in mind going in, wondering what the film-watching experience might have been like back then. The festive season and concepts of ‘magic’ and ‘miracles’ tend to go hand-in-hand, so the advent of any striking new film-making technique could only have added to the feeling of wonder that lucky film-goers must have experienced in those days.
This one is only a shade over a minute long but director (and occasional hypnotist!) George Albert Smith still conjures up something special. Basically, we see two little kids getting put to bed before Santa pops down the chimney to slip some prezzies in their bedside stockings. He then ‘disappears’ back up the chimney, as if by magic, before the kids wake up and jump around all chuffed to realise the fat man’s been. Considering this is over 120 years old, it all looks pretty amazing and really captures the timeless excitement of kiddies at Christmas.
This gives me a pleasant giddy feeling I hadn’t been expecting. There’s something special about these older, expressionist films that creates a wonderful feeling of otherworldliness that’s quite unlike anything you see today. Maybe it’s the thought of 1890s children totally freaking out at the sight of Santa and the visual tricks used to make him vanish. It’s short but exceptional.
Next is The Christmas Angel from 1904, a French short directed by the legendary Georges Melies, the illusionist, actor, and the director behind the silent classic A Trip to the Moon. This one’s a bit bleaker but with a welcome, heartwarming ending.
It's snowy, bitter winter and a poor girl and her family live in poverty. As this is the silent era, there’s plenty of theatrical overacting and gesticulating to highlight the family woes. The girl goes to town to beg but gets bullied by the other established territorial beggars and townspeople. She eventually crashes out on the icy pavement, but is helped by a kindly rag and bone man before being ‘rescued’ by a well-to-do rich couple. They take her home and generously lavish the family with gifts just as an angel trippily appears.
Apparently the girl dies in the French version and is taken to heaven by said angel, which is a bummer and just goes to show that American/British audience’s tastes and predilection for happy endings have been around for a very long time.
I don’t find this one as interesting as Santa Claus but am grateful for the happy conclusion. It’s fascinating as a time capsule from the dawn of cinema, a medium still finding its feet and working out the most economical ways to tell a story. Some scenes seem to go on way longer than my modern sensibilities tell me they should but I remind myself that these guys didn’t have a whole lot of reference points. They were cinematic pioneers, working out the blueprint that the imitators would follow, so I have a lot of respect for this one, even if I feel bored at times.
I find myself appreciating the use of really early effects with Melies obviously wanting to go for it and use this medium to push artistic boundaries and give audiences something special, like angels, fake snow, pyrotechnics and fancy superimpositions and dissolves that nobody could possibly have experienced before. The effort and thought that must have gone into this is mind-boggling when you consider they were making this stuff up as they went along, pretty much inventing modern day spectacle as they went along. It’s too easy to take films like this for granted, so well done to Melies for crafting something that’s festive, moving and haunting.
I decide to check out some more Melies next, going back a few years to 1900’s The Christmas Dream, a weird but spectacular silent short that alternates between semi-realistic, albeit melodramatic scenes and more fantastical moments. It’s an intriguing mix of realism and a baroque, expressionistic style, featuring lots of lavish, painted backdrops of snow-covered rooftops and chimneys, contributing to a wonderfully festive feel.
There’s not much plot with lots of images of children preparing for sleep, before visions of angels fly across the rooftops, dropping gifts down chimneys. It doesn’t feel very cohesive, but has an enchanting dream-like feel.
Then we get lots of shots of harlequins dancing around in impressive, grand choreographed routines and a huge bell rings out. I’m not sure what it all means but it’s very Christmassy and intriguing. It's all so ambitious and beautiful and I keep thinking you could freeze any frame and it would look like a gorgeous, ornate painting. It’s another staggering example of early cinema.
1905’s The Night Before Christams is next and it’s an American effort from Edwin S. Porter that closely follows Clement Clarke Moore's famed 1823 poem. I’m getting a feel for these films now and find this one to be totally ace. Key lines from the poem introduce each scene, making the plot real easy to follow.
There are some great moments showing the children too darn excited to sleep, before we follow Santa himself getting ready and shooting off from the North Pole with his reindeer. There’s some immense camera trickery here with great use of miniature models and a painted backdrop to depict Santa’s sleigh soaring across the night sky. This must have been so magical to behold at the time. He goes in, leaves the gifts, the kids go suitably apeshit. You know the drill.
This is similar to George Albert Smith’s 1898 effort, but absolutely amplified by leaps and bounds in filmmaking technology and all the better for it. For me, it really captures everything about the season that makes little ones go gaga and for a silent nine minute black and white effort, it’s a real treat.
More excellent camera duplicity is put to use to bring together Dickens’ A Christmas Carol in J. Searle Dawley’s 1910 short. It’s all over and done with in only 13 minutes, but manages to distill the plot and spirit of the quintessential yuletide tale marvelously.
There are some intelligent uses of special effects to create ‘ghosts’ and they really had to be inventive then, being forced to tell an entire story with just one ‘reel’ of film, of only 15 minutes or so. Here, they get away with having just one spirit and compress and condense various plot elements to smartly shorten the story. It’s risky but works well.
Superimposing shots over each other works eerily well to create creepy ‘see-through’ spirits. I can remember copying this trick back when I was a keen young photography student to make my pal look like a ghost – it’s really effective and fun.
The film is a little crude, but I tip my hat to them, as it’s a satisfying, brisk, entertaining version of the immortal tale.
My favourite of all the silent classics I see today is from Birth of a Nation director D.W. Griffith, which kinda sucks, as ol’ D.W. was a bit of a stinky racist. The man sure as hell knew how to make a movie, though. I watch 1909’s A Trap for Santa Claus the morning after the most diverse Oscars ceremony ever, which makes me happy to think of how far we’ve come in the last 110 years. We could debate all day about whether it's truly possible to separate the artist from their dodgy personal lives, but I’m not ashamed to say I love this one.
It’s a heart-warming story about a poor, jobless drunk who decides his family would be better off without him, so writes them a letter telling them he’s off. Not long after he goes, his wife very jammily inherits a ton of money and a fancy estate – just in time for Christmas. Only problem is there’s no chimney – how will Santa get in?
No worries, says mum, they’ll just leave the window open. The kids, sensing an opportunity, decide to set a sneaky trap for the jelly-bellied one, involving string and a bell tied to the daughter’s toe. As fate would have it, their down-on-his-luck dad tries to burgle the house on Christmas Eve, leading to a simultaneously comical and tenderly moving reunion with daddy dressing up as Santa to give his kids the ultimate surprise.
This one makes me beam with happiness. It’s not full of fancy visual tricks, it’s just a pleasant tale, solidly told, with a joyous ending. I’m watching this on a day when we’re told our final offer on the house we want to buy has been knocked back which thoroughly devastates me. I needed a pick-me-up and my emotions are raw. Luckily, these great old movies really do the trick. Well done, silent films of the early twentieth century.
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