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.
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.