The Little Match Seller

I was taken aback by how saddening and powerful this little film, "The Little Match Seller"--a single shot film lasting little more than three minutes--from 1902 remains. It's directed by James Williamson, who was part of the so-called "Brighton School", which also included G.A. Smith, and was a hotbed for filmic innovation at the turn of the 20th Century. This film doesn't include their usual innovations in editing and camera positioning, but, rather, is something unique. Not for its special effects, which are multiple-exposure shots to project the Little Match Seller's visions on a wall. Smith had done that as far back as 1898, with "Santa Claus" and other films. The remarkable part of this film is the function of these visions within the narrative.

"The Little Match Seller", based on a fable by Hans Christian Anderson, is about a homeless child who sells matches at a building corner. To make it worse, it's cold and snowing; presumably, it's near Christmas, as indicated by her vision of a Christmas tree and the release date of the picture. Passersby ignore her, and a young boy throws snow at her and steals her last shoe. She lights matches partially for warmth, but also to create her visions, which include a fireplace and food--her inner wishes projected. Part of the power of this film is in how the girl's visions reflect cinema itself; they're projected images onto a blank screen lit by light. She is our projectionist as well as narrator of these films-within-a-film. The sad nature of the outer film adds to this power. The set, with convincing snow, and a stark minimalism adds to it. Moreover, the uncredited actress in the title role is wonderful; her performance makes this something special. I'd recommend this film to those who aren't even very interested in early cinema.

Other reviewers have covered the issues of the story and methods used for this short film by Williamson. What they fail to notice -- or at least note -- is that the editing is not primitive. It is highly advanced editing techniques from Magic Lantern Shows -- the technological show medium preceding the movies. The scenes and people that the match seller imagines as she lights her dwindling supply of matches are shown inset behind her. How was this achieved? It might be projected, it might be a mask or it might be by removing a scrim.

The method of achieving this is not important: the inset image to show a character's thoughts was a standard of magic lanterns, largely supplanted by a wipe and either a change of color or focus in films. The technique is not extinct; it is still used occasionally, most recently to my knowledge in Jeunet's UN LONG DIMANCHE DE FIANCAILLES.

I spent the better part of one night watching a bunch of 1 to 10 minute early short silent films (by this I mean the era of Lumiere and those of the next couple of decades), and I discovered a director I wasn't familiar with, James Williamson. He made a number of notable and clever 1 minute films (plus the 4 minute "Fire!" that speaks for itself), and often times it's simple set-ups or camera tricks ("The Big Swallow" is all about testing the extreme close up feature on the camera), but he wasn't really into showing metaphor or going into a character's consciousness. Little Match Seller is different, and it's one of those first, primary examples of how to use visual metaphor, to use the grammar of cinematic expression, in order to convey a message.

This may come as a shock but (gasp) sometimes poor people are very young and on their own and have no one to look out for them. In this scenario a little girl is by a giant closed door as it's snowing heavily all around her. But she doesn't despair too greatly since she has her matches and when she lights a match it makes a vision: she can see inside the house to how luxurious it is, how good the dinner looks at the table (boy that turkey!) and she even pictures someone nice and kind to comfort her. And then she dies.

What happens after this I won't say, you should just watch it, but suffice it to say in 3 minutes this director conveys more emotional resonance and reaches out for the audience's empathy better than some directors do today with feature-length productions. It may be a little much to see the religious connotation to it, but there's a purity to how it's all expressed that I couldn't resist. It treats humanity in a similar way to something like It's a Wonderful Life, so it makes sense where it winds up. And the technique that Williamson used here, showing us through a super-imposition on the door when a match is lit, makes the fantasy palpable, especially as it's a young person who has an infinite amount of hope.

This is an extraordinary piece of work for any era, and it shows how cinema can be more than simply documenting things as they actually are, and that even things such as composition - where the girl is sitting and standing matters, and how much space there is for the events to unfold matters too - and that keeping it all on one shot forces us to not look away. There's nothing you can really be distracted by if you're looking at suffering and, on the flip-side, hope in equal measure. Surely the director's best(?)