Based on a ballad by newspaper man George Robert Sims, " Christmas Day in the Workhouse" is a preachy melodrama about a pauper who lectures the wealthy of a parish on their hypocritical lack of true charity by recalling a past year's Christmas where they turned him away for begging for food to take back to his bed-ridden dying wife, instead requiring the poor to be meekly served by them.
Part of the Edition Filmmuseum's two-disc set "Screening the Poor," the film is included with a reconstruction of a magic lantern version of the same monologue, "In the Workhouse" produced in 1890 by Bamforth. For a silent film, there are just too many intertitles to it, but as spoken word over hand-painted magic lantern slides, it works rather well, although the film retains the benefit of the pictures moving. There's a also a flashback-within-the-flashback, as seen as a multiple-exposure mise-en-abyme effect and which is narrated by the delirious wife, whereas the rest of the flashback is narrated by the widower. Anyways, there were reasons that the magic lantern didn't entirely go away as popular entertainment initially with the invention of cinematography. Both art forms had overlaps and unique qualities.
(From BFI 35mm print)
