Santa Claus
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About Santa Claus
A maid (Laura Bayley) puts two children to bed and turns out the light. They sleep. On the roof, Santa lowers a Christmas tree down the chimney and follows it. He comes out of the fireplace, fills the stockings on the footboard, waves, and vanishes. The children wake and clap at what is in the stockings.
Cast & crew
More about Santa Claus
George Albert Smith directed and produced this Brighton trick film. A print runs 1 minute 16 seconds. It was released in September 1898. The children are played by Dorothy Smith and Harold Smith. Laura Bayley plays the maid.
Themes
Background
A Brighton film of September 1898, made the year after two American Mutoscope Christmas subjects.
Reviews
Michael Brooke of BFI Screenonline calls it the cinema's earliest known example of parallel action, and, with the double exposure, one of the most visually and conceptually sophisticated British films made up to then.
Technique
Double exposure shows Santa on the roof and in the chimney while the children are asleep in the same room, an early piece of parallel action.
Preservation
The film is known from a surviving print discussed by BFI Screenonline.
Notes
- The timed length is 1 minute 16 seconds.
- Smith had already used double exposure that year in The Mesmerist and Photographing a Ghost.
- It is sometimes called the first Christmas film. American Mutoscope released Santa Claus Filling Stockings and The Christmas Tree Party in 1897.
Scenes
- Santa comes out of the fireplace, fills the stockings, and vanishes.
