Run Time: 4 minutes. Studio: Star-Film. Director: Georges Méliès. Main Cast: Georges Méliès. Original Title: Rêve de Noël.
It should not come as a surprise that French filmmaker, Georges Méliès should have directed one of the earliest Christmas films. Georges Méliès was one of the early masters of fantasy films and magic played a major role in most of his films. With how fantasy and magic fit perfectly with the Christmas season, this a match made in heaven.
In this film, on Christmas Eve a woman tucks two little kids into bed and reads to them. A couple set pieces of Christmas go through the children's heads. The first involves a land of toys that come to life and dance. The second involves a church at wintertime. After these wonderful dreams, the kids awake on Christmas morning and rush downstairs to see a big Christmas tree with presents underneath.
With a runtime of 4 minutes, naturally the storyline is very simple. Yet this is the real charm of this movie. In this short runtime, the film perfectly captures what it is like to be a kid at Christmas time. As a child there is nothing like going to bed on Christmas Eve and waking up Christmas morning. Like many of you, my mind would run wild as I went to bed on Christmas Eve night. I was excitingly thinking about the magic that Christmas brings. Then waking up Christmas morning was simply the greatest feeling in the world. To frame these imaginative set pieces with going to sleep on Christmas Eve and waking up on Christmas morning makes it feel all the more magical as it brings us back to our own childhoods.
The set pieces themselves are fantastic. The set and backdrop for the Toyland scene is fantastic. It looks like a world that would come straight from a child's imagination. The church at wintertime gives a very peaceful and serene feel.
The visual filmmaking is very sophisticated for its time and even for today it looks great. This movie has many perfect uses of cross-dissolves, a filmmaking technique that would have felt new and fresh to audiences at the time. Such an effect was not easy to achieve at the turn of the century. Historian J.B. Kaufman (on his wonderful website) described how this was done. "This means that all of this picture would have been photographed on one continuous strip of film and must have called for meticulous preplanning. Once the first scenes had been photographed and the first dissolves were in place, there was no turning back. Méliès and company would have exactly one chance to film each scene in this little pageant, and if any mistakes occurred, retakes were not an option. That shoe at center stage, far from indicating a careless or slipshod filmmaker, is actually a testament to the pains Méliès took in crafting this and his other films."
If you want to watch this delightful film, you can do so below.
This is a very underrated Christmas time treat.
Resources Used
https://www.jbkaufman.com/movie-of-the-month/r%C3%AAve-de-no%C3%ABl-1900
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