L'Arroseur arrosé

This Lumière classic would always be worth seeing simply for its significance as a pioneering effort in using motion pictures to tell a fictional story. It also retains its interest as a brief but amusing story in itself, which sticks in your mind despite its simplicity.

The old practical joke with the hose, which forms the premise of "L'arroseur arrosé", is one familiar to almost everyone, since we've all either played it on someone or had it played on us. Maybe that's one reason why, as light as it is, this works pretty well despite the relatively simple technique. Another reason is that the opening situation is set up well, establishing a peaceful scene of a man watering his garden, before the main action begins.

For such an early effort, it's carried off quite well. Once the action gets going, you can see that the actors are a bit self-conscious of the camera's location, and there are a couple of brief awkward moments as a result. The man playing the gardener, though, is very believable in his responses to the situation. And anyway, this little movie is almost beyond a critique, in view of its good-natured energy, not to mention all of the later ideas that grew out of this simple footage.

This short film was thought to be the first film comedy. The production was shot at Jardin des Lumière à Lyon Monplasir, and there are believed to be two versions of this film, one shot in 1895 and one in 1896.

The short narrative synopsis is of a boy stepping on a gardeners hose to stop the water flow, the gardener looks down the end of the hose to see if there is a blockage, at this point the boy steps off the hose, and the water flow is released, knocking the gardeners hat off. The gardener then spanks the boy.

This shot was filmed by Lumiere in 1895, at this point, movement of the camera had not been experimented with, so the actors in the film had to stay within the boundary of the cameras view. At one point in the film, the boy and the gardener go slightly off shot, and have to walk to the right to get back to the centre of vision. Now days, the actors never walk off shot accidentally, as movement of the camera is possible.

L'Arroseur Arrosé is a cry from the depths of the proletariat for social emancipation, whereby the disenfranchised masses represented in a life-justifying performance as the Boy can only find justice through subversion and revolution. Indeed, the conclusion of this epic drama can been seen as a confirmation of the inherent violence in a Hegelian dialectic of class conflict; the chilling figure of the Gardener (a possible reference to ecclesiastical authority?) viciously suppresses the rights of the Boy to self-expression. The perennial nature of this conflict is undermined when both parties rush out of the "garden"; no resolution is possible except mutual annihilation.

Or, it could be a piece of light-hearted fun, as Lumiere recognised that the novelty of seeing pictures of factory workers and trains moving was wearing thin, and needed to be backed up with plot. It'll raise a smile for a few seconds, as a memento of an age with less demanding audiences.

A gardener is watering the garden, a hose in his hands, and the famous practical joke that exists together with a water hose is caught on film by Louis Lumière. A boy steps on the hose, waits until the gardener starts looking into the hose and lets the water go again. The gardener ends up wet in the face. This quite funny Lumière piece should have ended there, I guess, but we also get to see how the gardener gets his revenge. Slapstick was already pretty entertaining in 1895.

A fictional little film from Lumière, the first practical joke on film. I enjoyed this piece, almost a minute long, very much. Like Lumière's 'La Sortie des Usines Lumière' and 'L'Arrivée d'un Train à la Ciotat' it has its own place in the history of the cinema. Definitely worth watching!

L'arroseur arrosé (1897)

If you go through the films that were made during the 1890s you'll notice that there was a style of comedy that several American comedies did as well as this one from France. Basically the joke is that someone will have a water hose and will be watering something. Someone else will step on the line causing the man to wonder what's going on. He then places the hose to his face, the other man releases his foot and bam. Someone is wet. This here has to be the fourth and fifth film that I've seen the same gag play out. Is it funny? Not really but at the same time it is interesting seeing so many different companies trying to the joke.