A Holiday Pageant at Home (1901) User Reviews

Pretty Bad

[boblipton · 4/10 · 24 December 2022]

The titles and the actions make it clear what is supposed to happen in this short film. Unfortunately, it is a bit of a mess.

Mother and the children wait until father comes in, whereupon the children perform some sort of Christmas pageant. This much we know because of the title of this film. What their motions are supposed to represent is impenetrable to me; I have no idea, for example, why the smallest child puts on a cowboy hat and chases his elders are the chair. I suppose it's meant to be cute. Within the context of not knowing what's going on, it's just another annoyance.

Elsewhere, particularly in England, film makers were using editing and other techniques to tell a story the audience could follow. Not here!

Basically Uninteresting

[Hitchcoc · 4/10 · 22 December 2020]

Beyond a pretty sharp image, there is little to this film. Most things were experimental at this time and one wonders if they cared about anything but putting a group of people on camera. Not really worth the effort.

early static filmmaking

[SnoopyStyle · 5/10 · 20 December 2021]

A family has some fun in their home during Christmas time. There is only one camera angle. There is only one set. One would suspect that this is a family home movie except these are obvious actors and this is an obvious stage set. There isn't much to the story. There isn't much of a story. It's really a test pattern for an early filmmaker and performing group. Maybe it's the fimmaker's family.

An Ambitious Holiday Feature For Its Time

[Snow Leopard · 20 March 2006]

This holiday-themed movie is, to be honest, neither particularly impressive nor particularly entertaining, but it represents an ambitious effort for 1901. The story-telling technique is just not polished enough to tell the story, and as a result things don't fit together especially well in most places. But with four distinct scenes, related only by the broad story line, it was an enterprising attempt to move beyond the limits of the average movie of its day.

The story follows a fairly large family as they put together a private stage show for the holiday season. Their 'performance' is framed by two domestic scenes that are actually the best parts of the movie. The actual play sequences don't really come together, which in large part is probably due to limited experience with communicating a story's details in a motion picture. Overall, it does give a pleasant domestic portrait of the family, but that could have been accomplished with simpler and more direct means.

It's mostly worth seeing as a historical example. Before movies could move on to longer features with more involved stories, film-makers had to try things like this, so that they and their successors could learn what worked and what didn't work.

Pretty terrible

[preppy-3 · 1/10 · 27 December 2003]

A bunch of untalented kids act out a play on Christmas Eve for the parents. Also, two of the girls do some sort of speech. Of course, the film is silent so...why was this done? We can't hear any dialogue so we have no idea what's going on. I suppose this has some historical interest as a film and of what (supposedly) happened in homes on Christmas Eve. But it's entertainment value is nil. The only good thing is it's 5 minutes long! A must-miss.

Not much about this says 'holiday'.

[planktonrules · 2/10 · 22 December 2021]

Although "A Holiday Pageant at Home" is supposed to be about Christmas, you really have no idea for several reasons. First, there are no traditional decorations nor clothing to indicate it's Christmas. Second, and more importantly, like many early silent films, there are very, very few inter title cards to explain what the heck is happening in this one! It's all about some family members putting on some sort of a play for the rest of the family...but it's hard to know this when you watch. A rather incoherent film...one that seemed more confusing than anything else.

Shadows From A Century Past

[Ron Oliver · 10/10 · 29 December 2001]

Doting parents watch their children perform A HOLIDAY PAGEANT AT HOME.

This tiny film is an interesting bit of nostalgia - even the fixed, static camera cannot completely extinguish the spark of warmth it engenders. The performers look like a real family - it would be interesting to know who they were. The children act authentically juvenile, as if they were actually making up their little play on the spot. From humble roots like this the mighty movie industry would grow.

Al Kryszak provided the score for the video compilation A Christmas Past, in which this film appears.

Decent History

[Michael_Elliott · 29 December 2008]

Holiday Pageant at Home, A (1901)

** (out of 4)

Minor film has a family at home where they watch their kids put on a Christmas pageant as the title pretty much tells you. This is an early film that really is only going to be watched by those who enjoy seeing early cinema as most with find this rather dull with not too much going for it. The film certainly isn't bad but there's nothing here that would make you want to tell people to watch it. I think the biggest problem is that whoever directed it wasn't really sure how to tell a story and that translation really gets lost somewhere during the making of the movie. It's somewhat hard trying to figure out what's going on and when you do figure it out there's really nothing impressive to it.