The Little Matchgirl

2006

Animation / Drama / Family / Fantasy

6
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Upright 93%
IMDb Rating 7.8/10 10 5625 5.6K

winter fairy tale based on short story short film

Director

Roger Allers Photo
Roger Allers

Top cast

720p.BLU 1080p.BLU
61.29 MB
1280*720
English 2.0
NR
23.976 fps
12 hr 6 min
Seeds 13
125.65 MB
1920*1080
English 5.1
NR
23.976 fps
12 hr 6 min
Seeds 57

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by Atreyu_II 9 / 10

A little great short. Rare modern Disney masterpiece.

'The Little Match Girl' is a Disney animated short of enormous quality. In fact, it's a surprise to know that this is a relatively recent short, such are its high standards. It means that Disney wasn't as lifeless as it seemed, after all.This short has potential to become a classic, for it lacks no ingredients to achieve that. It has a simple but emotional story, beautiful artwork and backgrounds, great animation, magic and a classic atmosphere. The music is beautiful too, capturing the essence of this mini-film: "Nocturne from String Quartet No. 2 in D Major" by Alexander Borodin. It feels much more like a short from Disney's good old days than something from recent years. The story is sad and emotional, like I mentioned. It takes place in Russia and its artwork and backgrounds have a vaguely familiar feeling (resembling 20th Century Fox's "Anastasia"). The little girl of the story looks like Mulan, though.This story is based on a Hans Christian Anderson's fable about a poor and homeless little girl trying to sell matches in a cold Winter night (when it's freezy and snowing), possibly to get some money for some food and possibly to find a warm and comfortable place. The story shows us the difficulties she has to deal with and her wishes. These wishes are shown through the visions she has (like being in a warm and comfortable place). There are no dialogs at all, but despite that it's very easy to understand the story and its message.This short is included as an extra in 'The Little Mermaid' Platinum Edition DVD released in 2006. After getting that DVD, that is how I got to know this short.
Reviewed by SevenStitches 9 / 10

A rare glimpse of the post 2000 Disney at their creative best.

I first saw this film streamed on youtube.com and had no idea that it was a Disney short. Sure it had Disney's beautifully fluid animation (in 2D no doubt, just like old times), but unlike Disney of late, it told a deeply emotional tale with inventive visuals and no compromises in its themes. Its based on the Hans Christian Anderson fable of a small Russian girl selling matchsticks on a harsh winter's evening, when no one seems to care less. Alone and without shelter, she rides out the night lighting her matchsticks for warmth in a street corner, allowing herself to be transported to hospitable, warmer places of fantasy.By the end, i was deeply moved by what i'd seen, but as the credits rolled, i was astonished; directed by Roger Allers; executive produced by Roy E. Disney?! Who would've thought that the company currently responsible for such tat as "The Wild" and "Chicken Little" are still capable of such profound work as this? I thought that this kind of animation only existed in Japan. Apparently, Disney is still alive somewhere under all that commercialism. In a western culture that thrives on bland, generic animated comedies (fot the most part), in short and feature length, seeing this, and from the company that seems to have finally submitted its guard to that culture, is a breath of fresh air (to use a well worn cliché).Get "The Little Mermaid" Platinum DVD release and give it a glimpse, the only place your likely to see this in an acceptable format. This is an improvement from Disney, hands down, not just on their most recent stuff, but from all their modern works. While the majority of the 90's showcased impressive and at times classic examples of Disney's animated division working at their best, no other film from their modern catalogue tackles such real ventures in human desperation and suffering. True, this is mostly due to the source text. But several of Disney's other adaptations of literature containing disturbing and tragic content have all but washed out those elements, so while the result was still universally great entertainment in an innocent way, it definitely missed out on the more emotionally rich possibilities that Japanese animation mines frequently, and Disney itself used to acquire from time to time in their earlier classics (Dumbo and Pinocchio to name a few). Not so here, Disney seems to have acknowledged this revelation from the east. In fact "The Little Matchgirl" is actually comparable to the profoundly depressing Studio Ghibli war time anime, Isao Takahata's "Grave of the Fireflies", in its sophistication, while also remaining fairly inexplicit to appeal to all but the youngest audience. Stuff like this has very rarely found its way into western animation, and pretty much never in the ones released as mainstream features. This may be only a short, but if Disney can somehow stick to this path of much more sophisticated and imaginative movie-making and implant that thinking into their feature output, we may well see their next Golden Age in animation sooner than planned. Fingers crossed.
Reviewed by rmetzger-4 9 / 10

The plight of a little girl set in turn of the century Russia.

One of the saddest cinematic displays I have ever seen. It is 2D rendered 3D animation overlaid with traditional illustrations as well. The animation is well done and coordinates well with the score. The film is very short, 11 min or so, but it is a simple plot with only one main character (the match girl), and by the end of the picture you are totally engaged in the girls plight. H.C. Anderson had a way with human despair, and this film captures that nature without one word uttered. I recommend this film despite its graphic illustration of society's malevolence and disregard. To be honest I have never read the original Anderson story, but it seems to have a similar tone to his other works (not the Disney adaptations).
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