The Little Princess

Sara Crewe is the daughter of a wealthy officer. Her father goes to the war in South Africa and leaves her at a boarding school in London. Seeing the money, the headmistress Miss Minchin treats Sara differently; she gives her the best room and arranges private lessons. Then news comes from the front: the father is listed missing and the payments stop. Miss Minchin changes everything the same day. Sara is moved to the attic and put to work as a servant. The girl does not believe her father is dead. She starts going round the military hospitals one by one. Walter Lang directs. Shirley Temple plays Sara; Richard Greene and Anita Louise are in the cast. The source is Frances Hodgson Burnett's novel. It is Shirley Temple's first feature in colour. The adaptation changes the ending of the novel; a meeting not in the book was added. The matter it treats is treatment set by money; the school's manner changes entirely within a day and the film shows it plainly. There is a dream sequence; the colour ballet section stands outside the narrative and belongs to the show conventions of the period. The war stays in the background and the narrative gathers itself in the hospital scenes. Its limit is structure; the narrative proceeds in a melodrama shape and the resolution is too tidy. Another limit is register; the emotional steering is high and the supporting characters are types. Who it is for: viewers who like classic family films and the Shirley Temple period. Who it is not for: it is predictable, the emotional dose high, and the ending too clean.