The Sick Kitten

The Sick Kitten, reprises the discourse started by Smith with Grandma’s Reading Glass (1900) and As Seen Through a Telescope (1901). Compared to the second, he’s back to shoot indoors. As in the first, there are two characters, this time two children in an American shot, while they are pampering a sweet sick kitten. And it’s precisely the kitten the real star of this film. When, to heal him, they make him drink a medicine from a teaspoon, the camera cuts to a close-up of the kitten.

Compared to the first two works, the close-up has no masks applied to the lens: Smith had become familiar with the camera and the medium; he already understood in Mary Jane's Mishap, that he could do a cut showing the subject closer to the lens, without the audience could possibly be dazed.

At the end of the short film, the shot turns back in middle field, showing the young doctor who takes off his hat as a sign of reverence towards the viewers and then leaves.