A Trap for Santa

A movie that went full circle from being boring to whatever to weird. It is a weird little movie that simply has its moral, pacing and plot all over the place. Can´t really say I enjoyed myself here.

A man down on his luck with no job leaves his family. The wife inherent her aunt and becomes rich. The kids wants to capture Santa the night before Christmas.

This is a pretty thin and weak plot. The movie starts out awfully slow and then pics up, only to have a really bad moral ending. The wife character makes a horrible decision that kind of speaks to the weird morals of the director. But there isnt really much of a movie or plot here. A thin, thin red line that is nearly invisible and it makes the movie just feel like random events happening after another.

Speaking of mortals, it´s fun to learn more about Griffith the more of his movies you watch. The constant sin of drinking in his movies are interesting and is also important here. It is a lot of his moving starting with the sin of drinking. It´s almost like he had an agenda.

Okay speed fire fun stuff. The waiter pick up is insane and looks so funny. I was surprised by that and what insane strength to just pick up a person like that. The beginning is very slow and a lot of looking sad and into the camera. Is it night outside the final outdoor scene? Sure doesn't look like it. Are the kids wearing makeup? Or are they just looking....weird? I don´t know.

Not a lot to talk about other than this is very off season to watch a Christmas movie but here we are. Rather dull, slow, boring and barely with a plot, marry Christmas I guess.

In this little tale, a man has a family, a boy and a girl, and, of course, his wife. There is no work and the family is on the verge of starvation. They have one loafs of bread left and the boy eats the whole thing. The father feels his family is better off without him and takes off. He also seems to have a drinking problem. Then comes great news. The wife's aunt dies and leaves them a bunch of money. They movie to a nice place. It's Christmas Eve and the kids await Santa. They set a trap for him and things go from there. I have to say that those kids were some very strange looking beings, especially the boy. But, of course, for silent films, everything is exaggerated.

This is my 3rd DWG movie and 2nd with his favorite actor Walthall. Both are full of talent as proved in the movie and both should be remembered for their decisive work and awarded correctly. A bit like Spielberg, DWG is interested in good story and is fit to every genre: here the movie starts like a difficult drama and finishes indeed like a Xmas tale. I like the way the famous american dream is realized: problems solve with huge money (the same in Pacino Danny Collins) but beyond, the most important is kids joy and wife happiness. Like i have already written, with those very short movie, everything moment is essential and the emotion is deeper and bigger than the diluted movies of today! DWG was really exceptional to repeat the performance over and over and it's not pure luck that I keep stumbling over his movies over and over!

D.W. Griffith packed quite a bit of material into just a reel or so of film in this holiday-themed short feature. With scenes of domestic strife, domestic comedy, social commentary, melodrama, plus more, there is enough material here for a much longer movie. As a result, it's pretty interesting, although from a technical viewpoint there are a couple of weaknesses.

The setup depicts a financially troubled family, with the father's despair driving him to drunkenness and other problems. The story that follows depends on some rather forced developments, but eventually things come together in an ending that contrasts the father's predicament with the light-hearted antics of his children as they plan "A Trap For Santa". The resolution is upbeat enough to help make up for the more heavy material in the middle.

Like many of the movies from the late 1900s and early 1910s, this feature is a good example of the way that not just Griffith, but many film-makers of the era, were becoming more ambitious in the stories they wanted to tell, putting more and more material into a couple of reels of film, and soon gradually learning how to make longer features. It's also an interesting, if imperfect, movie in itself.

I have seen quite a few older silent films and because of this, I could tell that this was a relatively well-made film. The only problem is that the acting style is a bit old-fashioned--even for 1909. There is a bit too much melodrama and over-acting even in an age when this was much more acceptable than it would have been just a decade later. Plus, the film really looks like it could have used more inter-title cards to explain the action. So, a little less over-acting and a few more cards explaining everything would have improved the film.

However, despite these shortcomings, the film STILL is pretty entertaining for the era and tells a complete story of a down-and-out family whose fortunes turn around for the holiday. It is a very interesting curio indeed!