A family has a sick woman at home. Her girl goes out in the snow to beg.A family has a sick woman at home. Her girl goes out in the snow to beg.A family has a sick woman at home. Her girl goes out in the snow to beg.
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Did you know
- TriviaGeorges Méliès (the film's director) reportedly filmed two different endings for this film. The first ending depicts the beggar girl freezing to death on the street, and then her soul entering heaven. And a second (and more famous) ending where the beggar is rescued by a wealthy couple, who then resolve her family's financial problems. The first ending was reserved for French audiences, and the second version for American audiences. Film historians consider this as evidence that American film audiences in the 1900s already had a reputation for preferring happy endings over tragic endings.
Featured review
Another Méliès Christmas Play
This Christmas play from early cinema magician Georges Méliès is a far more polished offering than was an earlier Christmas film of his, "The Christmas Dream" (Le rêve de Noël) (1900). Whereas that 1900 film lacked a cohesive narrative and was more of just a series of Christmas images, this 1904 film has a firm, even clichéd, melodramatic plot. In its seven tableaux, a girl's parents, apparently, send her out into the cold, snowy winter to beg to help pay their creditor and help with the mother's illness. The child's attempts at collecting alms are thwarted by "professional" beggars and a storefront offers no relief, either. Eventually, nearing death, the kid is rescued by a generous wealthy couple who shower the poor family with gifts. A superimposed Christmas angel examines the scene.
"The Christmas Angel" is nothing exceptional, but at least it has a structure and a simple, if vapid, moral in the short runtime of nine to ten minutes. It's a mostly polished production for its time, with some good artificial snow and decent stage designs, including the home with snow coming in through the roof and a cutout missing wall for the storefront to allow for a lot of street-scene actions simultaneously. In one scene, a stop substitution was used to place painted simulated diegetic light on the set. On the other hand, it's a heavily theatrical and primitive melodrama, and both dissolves and direct cuts were used incongruously as scene transitions.
"The Christmas Angel" is nothing exceptional, but at least it has a structure and a simple, if vapid, moral in the short runtime of nine to ten minutes. It's a mostly polished production for its time, with some good artificial snow and decent stage designs, including the home with snow coming in through the roof and a cutout missing wall for the storefront to allow for a lot of street-scene actions simultaneously. In one scene, a stop substitution was used to place painted simulated diegetic light on the set. On the other hand, it's a heavily theatrical and primitive melodrama, and both dissolves and direct cuts were used incongruously as scene transitions.
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- Cineanalyst
- Aug 16, 2013
Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Language
- Also known as
- El ángel de Navidad
- Filming locations
- Production company
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
- Runtime10 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.33 : 1
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