The Night Before Christmas (1905)

It's December 24th, and 'Santa Claus' is busy feeding his reindeer and finishing up the toys that he will soon deliver. Meanwhile, the children in a large family hang their stockings over ... See full summary »

Director:

Edwin S. Porter

Writer:

Clement Moore (poem)

Storyline

It's December 24th, and 'Santa Claus' is busy feeding his reindeer and finishing up the toys that he will soon deliver. Meanwhile, the children in a large family hang their stockings over the fireplace, and then are put to bed. But the restless children cannot sleep, and they soon start a lively pillow fight. Back at his workshop, Santa loads up everything and begins his journey.

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Plot Keywords:

pillow fight | reindeer | toy | santa claus | christmas | 

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Genres:

Animation | Short | Family | Fantasy

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Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

16 December 1905 (USA)

Also Known As:

I nykta prin apo ta Hristougenna

Filming Locations:

New York City, New York, USA

Company Credits

Production Co:

Edison Manufacturing Company

Technical Specs

Runtime:

9 min

Sound Mix:

Silent

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Worldview Entertainment and the Killiam Collection has released a set of nine early movies about Christmas collectively called "A Christmas Past," with an original score by Al Kryszak. This movie is the ninth one, and has a running time of 9 minutes.

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Connections

Featured in A Hollywood Christmas (1996)

User Reviews

By today's standards it's crudely made, but for 1905, it's a gem

Okay, all of you that CAN'T or WON'T look at an early silent film without immediately dismissing or laughing at it can stop reading this review. The likelihood you would even try watching this film or stick with it is absurdly low, so this review is more for lovers of historically important cinema. For 1905, this is an incredible picture in so many ways. The sets for the time were extremely expensive and complex. The special effects, though surely out of date, also took a lot of imagination and planning. So for a 1905 production, this film screams 'quality' from start to finish.

The movie is the poem THE NIGHT BEFORE Christmas and as the lines are written out on inter-title cards, the action takes place on the screen. Because of this, the film is short and relatively simple, but compared to the other films of the era, the movie is still very engaging today and worth seeing from an historical and curiosity standpoint. About the only negative, and you can't blame the film's producers, is that the version I watched online had a soundtrack from a much later sound cartoon in the public domain. It just didn't match the film and I had to turn the volume down since it was so annoying.