The Little Match Girl
An impoverished girl tries to sell matches on New Year's Eve. Shivering with cold and unable to sell her wares, she sits in a sheltered nook. Striking a match to keep warm, the flame shows her what's beyond.
From the archive
The Little Match Girl is a 1928 French drama featurette film directed by Jean Renoir and starring Catherine Hessling. It follows a poor girl struggling to sell matches on New Year's Eve but is ignored by passersby. As she tries to keep warm by lighting her matches, she experiences vivid hallucinations of warmth and comfort, ultimately leading to her tragic death in the cold, where she is found smiling in the snow.
Why this is free to watch
The Little Match Girl (1928) is hosted by the Internet Archive as a public-domain or openly licensed work, which means its copyright has expired, lapsed, or was released by the rights holder. The uploader declared an explicit licence, linked in the source panel. Nitrate streams the file directly from the Archive and hosts no video itself.
- Director
- Jean Renoir
- Starring
- Catherine Hessling, Eric Barclay, Jean Storm, Manuel Raaby, Amy Wells, Guy Ferrant, Mme. Heuschling, Comtesse Tolstoi
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