The Little Match Girl (1954)
*** (out of 4)
Nice version of the Hans Christian Andersen story about a poor match girl who dreams of something better but in tragedy. According to Wiki (yeah, I know), this version was originally a 1952 French movie that was purchased by Castle Films in 1954 and they added the English narration. I had a hard time really getting too much information on this as the titles and credits have been replaced by the Castle Films one so even the print I watched did no good in that regards. For the most part I think this is one of the saddest "Christmas" stories out there and it really doesn't take too much to film it. This version here has a few different takes on the story including the girl being "rescued" by the Virgin Mary. I thought the young actress playing the girl did a pretty good job with it and unlike so many other dubbed movies, this one doesn't suffer from the translation. In fact, the story itself is so strong that you could easily turn off the sound and still be able to enjoy the message and the drama.
*** (out of 4)
Nice version of the Hans Christian Andersen story about a poor match girl who dreams of something better but in tragedy. According to Wiki (yeah, I know), this version was originally a 1952 French movie that was purchased by Castle Films in 1954 and they added the English narration. I had a hard time really getting too much information on this as the titles and credits have been replaced by the Castle Films one so even the print I watched did no good in that regards. For the most part I think this is one of the saddest "Christmas" stories out there and it really doesn't take too much to film it. This version here has a few different takes on the story including the girl being "rescued" by the Virgin Mary. I thought the young actress playing the girl did a pretty good job with it and unlike so many other dubbed movies, this one doesn't suffer from the translation. In fact, the story itself is so strong that you could easily turn off the sound and still be able to enjoy the message and the drama.