The Little Match Girl | |
---|---|
Directed by | Jean Renoir |
Written by | Hans Christian Andersen Jean Renoir |
Starring | Catherine Hessling Eric Barclay |
Cinematography | Jean Bachelet |
Release date |
|
Running time | 34 minutes |
Country | France |
Languages | Silent film French intertitles |
The Little Match Girl (French : La petite marchande d'allumettes) is a 1928 French drama featurette film directed by Jean Renoir and starring Catherine Hessling.
A young woman stands on a corner on New Year's Eve, trying to sell matchsticks. She is ignored by most passers by, except a young man who nearly approaches her before being called to a table in a restaurant. She doesn't notice the man until he is inside, eating. She gazes longingly at his food. A group of children pelt her with snowballs.
A policeman passes by and admonishes her for being outside with poor shoes. Rather than go home empty-handed, the girl crouches in a corner for warmth. Soon, she begins to hallucinate, imagining herself stepping into the toy display in the window next to her. She envisions herself and the young man from the diner being pursued through the toyland by a pirate embodying death. Eventually, he catches them both. The young woman dies in her vision and is draped on a hilltop near a cross. White flower petals fall on her face.
The film shifts back to reality and we see that the flower petals are really snow. An old woman finds her dead body in the snow.
The film is based on the 1845 short story of the same name by Hans Christian Andersen. [1]
"The Snow Queen" is an 1844 original fairy tale by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen. It was first published 21 December 1844 in New Fairy Tales. First Volume. Second Collection. The story centers on the struggle between good and evil as experienced by Gerda and her friend, Kai. Unlike Andersen's other stories, The Snow Queen is written in a novel-styled narrative, being divided into seven chapters.
Anna Karina was a Danish-French film actress, director, writer, model, and singer. She was an early collaborator of French New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard, her first husband, performing in several of his films, including The Little Soldier (1960), A Woman Is a Woman (1961), My Life to Live (1962), Bande à part, Pierrot le Fou (1965), and Alphaville (1965). For her performance in A Woman Is a Woman, Karina won the Silver Bear Award for Best Actress at the Berlin Film Festival.
Françoise Paulette Louise Dorléac was a French actress. She was the elder sister of Catherine Deneuve, with whom she starred in the 1967 musical, The Young Girls of Rochefort. Her other films include Philippe de Broca's movie That Man from Rio, François Truffaut's The Soft Skin, Roman Polanski's Cul-de-sac, and Val Guest's Where the Spies Are.
Eva Ionesco is a French actress and filmmaker. She is the daughter of photographer Irina Ionesco and came to international prominence as a child model after being featured in her mother's works.
"The Little Match Girl" is a literary fairy tale by Danish poet and author Hans Christian Andersen. The story, about a dying child's dreams and hope, was first published in 1845. It has been adapted to various media, including animated, live-action, and VR films as well as television musicals and opera.
Pola X is a 1999 French drama film directed by Leos Carax and starring Guillaume Depardieu, Yekaterina Golubeva and Catherine Deneuve. The film is loosely based on the Herman Melville novel Pierre: or, The Ambiguities. It revolves around a young novelist who is confronted by a woman who claims to be his lost sister, and the two begin a romantic relationship. The film title is an acronym of the French title of the novel, Pierre ou les ambiguïtés, plus the Roman numeral "X" indicating the tenth draft version of the script that was used to make the film.
A Real Young Girl is a 1976 French drama film about a 14-year-old girl's sexual awakening, written and directed by Catherine Breillat. The film, Catherine Breillat's first, was based on her fourth novel, Le Soupirail.
Jean Patrick Modiano, generally known as Patrick Modiano, is a French novelist and recipient of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is a noted writer of autofiction, the blend of autobiography and historical fiction.
The Young Slave is an Italian literary fairy tale written by Giambattista Basile in his 1634 work, the Pentamerone.
The Little Thief is a 1988 French drama directed by Claude Miller. It is based upon an unfinished script by François Truffaut. Truffaut died before being able to direct the film himself. The film had 1,834,940 admissions in France. Set in the French countryside after the end of World War II, it tells the story of a 15-year-old girl abandoned by her parents, who is looking for love and independence but succumbs to stealing and sleeping with men.
Little Lili is a 2003 French drama film by French director Claude Miller. The film stars Ludivine Sagnier, Bernard Giraudeau, Nicole Garcia, Julie Depardieu and Jean-Pierre Marielle.
Renée Faure was a French stage and film actress.
Nana is a 1926 French silent drama film directed by Jean Renoir and starring Catherine Hessling, Werner Krauss and Jean Angelo. It was Renoir's second full-length film and is based on the 1880 novel by Émile Zola.
Catherine Hessling was a French actress and the first wife of film director Jean Renoir. Hessling appeared in 15, mostly silent, films before retiring from the acting profession and withdrawing from public life in the mid-1930s.
The Whirlpool of Fate or The Girl of the Water is a 1925 French silent drama film directed by Jean Renoir and starring Catherine Hessling as its heroine.
Julie-Marie Parmentier is a French actress.
La morte vivante is a 1982 French horror-drama film directed by Jean Rollin and starring Marina Pierro, Françoise Blanchard, Mike Marshall, Carina Barone, Fanny Magier, Patricia Besnard-Rousseau, and Sam Selsky. The story centers a young woman who has returned from the dead and needs human blood in order to survive.
Bed and Board is a 1970 French comedy-drama film directed by François Truffaut, and starring Jean-Pierre Léaud and Claude Jade. It is the fourth in Truffaut's series of five films about Antoine Doinel, and directly follows Stolen Kisses, depicting the married life of Antoine (Léaud) and Christine (Jade). Love on the Run finished the story in 1979.
The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches is a 2017 Canadian drama film directed by Simon Lavoie and starring Marine Johnson, Antoine L'Écuyer and Jean-François Casabonne. Lavoie also wrote the screenplay. An adaptation of Gaétan Soucy's novel of the same name, the film centres on Alice Soissons, a girl raised to believe she is a boy, who lives in with her father and brother in oppressive and secluded conditions. When her father dies, she ventures into the village, where outsiders tell her she is female, and she fears the family home is now under threat.
Blond Girl with a Rose is a late work period (1892–1919) oil painting executed in 1915–1917 by Pierre-Auguste Renoir and held in the collection of the Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris. The painting portrays Renoir's last model, the teenaged Catherine Hessling, who featured in several of his paintings during his final few years. She went on to marry Renoir's second son Jean in 1920 and become a film actress.