Santa Claus (1898 film)
Encyclopedia
Santa Claus is a 1898
British short
silent
drama 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."
1898 in film
-Events:*May 19 - Vitagraph is founded in New York.*Birt Acres invents the first amateur format, Birtac, by splitting 35 mm film into two halves of 17.5 mm.-Films released in 1898:*The Ball Game*The Nearsighted School Teacher...
British short
Short subject
A short film is any film not long enough to be considered a feature film. No consensus exists as to where that boundary is drawn: the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes or less, including all...
silent
Silent film
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...
drama film
Drama film
A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...
, directed by George Albert Smith
George Albert Smith (inventor)
George Albert Smith was a stage hypnotist, psychic, magic lantern lecturer, astronomer, inventor, and one of the pioneers of British cinema, who is best known for his controversial work with Edmund Gurney at the Society for Psychical Research, his short-films from 1897-1903 which pioneered film...
, 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
Photographing a Ghost
Photographing a Ghost is a short film that was directed by George Albert Smith. It is about photographers that try to take a picture of a ghost, but they repeatedly fail....
(1898), the result is one of the most visually and conceptually sophisticated British films made up to then."