The Little Match Girl

There's something distinctly Dickensian about this short animation. It's all about a young girl who makes her living selling matches on the wintry streets of New York on New Year's Eve. Ignored by the revellers, she retreats to take what shelter she can beside a grand house where she lights some of her matches to try and keep warm. Each match offers a little light and heat and soon she drifts off into dreams of a roaring fire, a comfortable bed and some fun. This is quite a beautifully drawn adaptation of Hans Christian Anderson's 19th century tale of poverty and neglect, but I didn't love the angelic scenes that seemed to me to suggest that there was some sort of heavenly purpose to her suffering, nor of the actual conclusion which rather robs the original story of the family sentiment that contributed so much to the poignancy of this tale. Still, it is a delicate feature well worth watching.

I was fortunate enough to get hold of a Super-8mm sound copy of this animated masterpiece. Every time I watch it I promise myself I won't choke up, but it gets to me every time (and I'm not emotional as a rule). That any film, regardless of subject matter or style, can still grip the emotions so strongly after sixty-odd years says something about the talents that combined to make it. It excels on so many levels: One could watch it once for its gorgeous use of color, once for its visual concepts, once for its story - suffice it to say that it's a film I've never stopped discovering. And since it tells its story with no dialog, its appeal is truly universal. Why this hasn't been reissued on video by Columbia/RCA is anybody's guess.

Unfortunately it is the exception rather than the rule when a screenwriter leaves the original story as it is. In this case, the steps of the original were followed, but the details were changed. It is almost as if the film script of this Columbia "color rhapsody" toon was written with only one reading of the source-story, and it never was consulted again. The mood does remain the same, however, and the world may seem even a bit harsher in this particular adaption. The New Year's Eve crowd is quite antagonistic to the poor little match seller. In Andersen's 3 page story it is the weather and her father which are the main adversaries, here it is the uncaring revelers which dominate.

Since the main essence of the story is left intact, and the treatment is grandiose, what remains is an excellent cartoon on any level. The combination of plot line and Brahm's Waltz in A-flat is a match made in heaven! It is obvious much time and care went into the animation, and the choice of colors were superb. Since images were used to convey meaning rather than dialogue(only the words, "Happy New Year" are heard)it seems that the important character of the grandmother had to be dropped in place of an angel. If you haven't read the short story in a long while, you may be willing to overlook this.

She has, for years, been the epitome of the downtrodden, the hopeless. The little girl who only has a box of matches to sell, desperately burns them for a little warmth. This is Hans Christian Andersen's tale which chokes you up. It is colorful and exhausting, to say the least. The problem is that at no point does she have a chance--all hope has been pulled from her.

Hans Christian Andersen's much-adapted short poem becomes an animated short film here, for perhaps the first time. Disney also made a computer-animated version in 2006. This "Little Match Girl" was part of Columbia's Color Rhapsody series, which were made in response to Disney's Silly Symphonies. The exaggerated cartoon qualities work to make what was already a depressing fairy tale into an even more maudlin affair. The little girl is unnaturally little, as she's trampled by New Year's Eve revelers, for whom she only rises to about the height of their shins. Plus, much of what size she is consists of huge eyeballs. As with Jean Renoir's live-action silent version of the 1920s, the matchstick hallucinations, which otherwise work well as cinematic metaphor, receive relative short shrift in favor of an extended dream sequence. The fanciful imagery here isn't too bad, and there's a bit of simulated, swinging camera movement in part, which goes well with the music, but it's nothing exceptional. I still prefer the earliest filmed version, James Williamson's 1902 one, along with Renoir's film, but this was a popular tale--earning this one an Oscar nomination.