Santa Claus (1898)

Directed by

George Albert Smith

Genre

drama film, silent film, Christmas film

Country

United Kingdom

Runtime

1 min

Rating

6.2 of 10 from 62 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

Santa Claus visits a house on Christmas Eve in this short silent film from 1898. It uses early special effects like double exposure to show magical moments.

historicalshortsilentwhimsicalinventivenostalgicsimplecharming

What happens

Santa Claus is an 1898 British silent trick film directed by George Albert Smith, which features Santa Claus visiting a house on Christmas Eve. The film, according to Michael Brooke of BFI Screenonline, "is believed to be the cinema's earliest known example of parallel action and, when coupled with double-exposure techniques that Smith had already demonstrated in the same year's The Mesmerist (1898) and Photographing a Ghost (1898), the result is one of the most visually and conceptually sophisticated British films made up to then." It is sometimes described as the first Christmas film and a technical marvel of its time, although American Mutoscope released Santa Claus Filling Stockings and The Christmas Tree Party a year earlier, in 1897. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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