The Sick Kitten

Okay, in 1903 this must have been considered a pretty good film. Back then, many of the films lasted only a minute or two and consisted of very mundane everyday activities--hence this dull film about a little girl feeding her sick cat. However, unlike many of the other raters, I STILL cannot rate this movie any higher than a 4 because there actually were GOOD films with plot, sets, acting and imaginative camera-work that should be elevated far above the boring drivel that was flooding the nickelodeons. Georges Méliès' films (not just his very famous LE VOYAGE DANS LE LUNE) were head and shoulders above the dull fare of the day. And this cat film is certainly one of those dull (but rather sweet) films.

What "planktonrules" does not realize about this film is that while it is nothing exceptional, it is a perfect example of breaking down a scene into several different shots, WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT WE'VE GOT TODAY! Remember, lots of early films did not feature closeups OR different perspectives when showing a specific scene! So when George Albert Smith made films like this, he automatically paved the road for the films of today.

The film "Sick Kitten" is an exact remake of Smith's earlier film "The Little Doctors"--a film which is apparently lost that supposedly featured the exact same structure and story-line. What we're shown for less than a minute is a girl feeding medicine to a kitten--who is supposed to be sick. Despite its very simple plot, even today this a cute little home movie--though NOT a documentary due to the blank backdrop which shows it is staged.

Known as "The Sick Kitten", the 55 seconds short film presents a boy and girl taking care of two kittens, one of them apparently sick is fed with a spoonful of milk. I use the word apparently because it's very easy to notice the kitten isn't sick, the way she/he drinks the milk with so much energy, almost attacking the spoon and by the way cats aren't so easy to deal with specially with a spoon.

George Albert Smith's "The Little Doctor and the Sick Kitten" works like a small magic trick. There's a problem to be solved (sick kitten), there's one solution (boy playing the doctor bringing the milk) and everyone gets happy and clapping at the ending. There isn't much to be said that this is one of cutest things ever filmed and more than 100 years later is still here for all of us to see it. Mention must be made about the quality of the film which is still impressive even for being from the early ages of film, the images are brilliantly presented, not grainy at all, you can see each scene with precision.

Well, I guess that's it. Now watch it. 10/10

This short feature combines pleasant, enjoyable material with good craftsmanship and some imagination. It was a remake of the 1901 film "The Little Doctors", which apparently was permanently lost. Remade and given the simpler title "Sick Kitten", it's a charming and creative little movie.

The engaging mini-story involves two children and two cats, one of which is unwell. The children's acting is really pretty good. They are lively, and they are naturally presented as being cute, but they are believable as well.

A number of G.A. Smith's films show that he seemed to have had the knack for getting believable performances like these from his cast.

As simple as the story is, both the tone and the technique are commendable. In many movies today, such scenes are too often presented with some kind of extraneous crudity inserted into the sequence, to keep it palatable to those with short attention spans. Alternatively, such scenes can be marred by labored post-modernist references or other pretentious material, to avoid the appearance of being too innocent or naive. To make this kind of simple, positive family scene believable and effective is really a more worthwhile achievement.

The technique is also worth noticing, as it shows one continual scene broken up into multiple segments with different camera viewpoints. While using this kind of technique is perhaps not a monumental creative insight, this seems to be one of the very earliest films to use it, and it certainly shows an appreciation for the material and for how best to communicate it to an audience.

Despite the tongue-in-cheek Marxian film-school analysis of the films in THE MOVIES BEGIN DVD set by Ms. Liddell-Hart and the amiable and seemingly unsophisticated enthusiasms of Snow Leopard, these films retain a fascination for those of us who are interested in old films for their own sakes. For those of us who are not fascinated by history, it is still interesting to see that there was cinema before, say, Adam Sandler ... and to see things done for the first time is always interesting. There is a freshness about the first time that sophistication cannot repeat.

But we can also appreciate these films on their own terms, and further, in their ability to engage us today. It is interesting to put oneself in the mind of someone a hundred years ago, and, given the short lengths of these pieces, thirty seconds can give us a complete film.... and is that such a great investment? If we can appreciate the works of Sophocles and Plautus and Shakespeare, why can we not admire the work done by Mr. G.A. Smith?

And, speaking from a historical viewpoint, Smith's work is amazing, since he seems to have invented the 'grammar of cinema' as Lilian Gish claimed D.W. Griffith did, ten years before Griffith set foot on a movie stage! True, his compositions are not as sophisticated as Griffith's, but Smith was an experimental film-maker, while Griffith was trying to use the results of those experiments. He tells little stories that, because of their subject matters, often do not age well. Well then, they are stuck in their times. This year (2002) saw a new film production of THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ERNEST, filled, as comedies of manners usually are, by people who would be spending their time in medical wards under heavy dosages of drugs in today's world. Yet we can laugh at Oscar Wilde's comedy and can, I hope, take pleasure from Mr. Smith's.