Partie d'écarté

During 1895, Louis Lumiere made a number of home movies starring his family and friends. In this film, Louis' father Antoine is playing a game of cards with a family friend, Felicien Trewey (a vaudeville performer). Another unidentified man is involved in the game as a waiter serves drinks and seems grotesquely intrusive. That's about it for this film. It can be noted that Trewey acted in: "The Transformation of Hats"(1895) where he does a comedy sketch; and "The Photograph"(1895)- where he appears with Lois' brother Auguste. These films were probably made at the same time as "Partie d'ecarte". Trewey also helped establish a Lumiere Theatre in Lyon during 1896 and set up a presentation of the Cinematograph at the Royal Polytechnic Institute in London during February 1896.

This footage of a card game in progress features an amusing scene that is captured with rather efficient photography. All of the characters in the movie seem to be having a good time, giving it a carefree feel that makes it among the more light-hearted of the early Lumière features.

The scene contains four characters, two of them playing cards, a third man watching, plus a waiter who brings them some drinks. The three men at the table are all quite at ease, but it is the waiter who is the most energetic of them all. He seems very eager to please, and he has very broad reactions to everything, so that eventually he gets to be a bit disconcerting. But he works as the comic figure that he was meant to be.

Aside from the waiter's entry, there are only small movements, but everything is captured within a camera field that seems to have been carefully chosen. The composition puts the cards and the table in the center, with the characters around the sides. Only a couple of the waiter's actions seem to have been forced into the camera field just a bit (which possibly accounts in part for the goofiness of the character). Overall, it works pretty well.

this film is a close relation to 'Repas de Bebe', a static scene at a table, in contrast to the films of movement, such as 'Sortie d'Usine' or 'Arrivee d'un train', suggesting a schizophrenia in the Lumieres' aesthetic, between the settle domestic and the energy of motion.

Not that 'Partie d'ecarte' is a tableau vivante - there is plenty of movement here, as three cardsharks are served drinks by a hyperactive waiter, a waiter who disrupts all symmetry - the card game; the positioning of the players; the composition of the image, with his intrusive, gestural obsequiousness. In a way, though he IS linked to the game, a game based on chance; he too is a wild card unsettling all attempts at harmony, at minimising the risks of chance.

The film is wonderful for other things too - the precariousness of a social order; the image of the fat complacent bourgeois; the pleasant country inn; the pouring of drinks - another level of movement, or framing of movement, in this deceptive short.

I watched this film on a DVD that was rammed with short films from the period. I didn't watch all of them as the main problem with these type of things that their value is more in their historical novelty value rather than entertainment. So to watch them you do need to be put in the correct context so that you can keep this in mind and not watch it with modern eyes. With the Primitives & Pioneers DVD collection though you get nothing to help you out, literally the films are played one after the other (the main menu option is "play all") for several hours. With this it is hard to understand their relevance and as an educational tool it falls down as it leaves the viewer to fend for themselves, which I'm sure is fine for some viewers but certainly not the majority. What it means is that the DVD saves you searching the web for the films individually by putting them all in one place – but that's about it.

With this film we have the usual action that is summed up in the title. In essence watching this action is quite dull because there is not a "pay-off" or a reason to watch it but here I actually found myself held by the film. What it was I realised was that the camera had a very small area within its view but it had four characters within this small area. With this small area we have two men playing one another, another pouring drinks and a waiter looking on and laughing. Dramatically it offers nothing but I was surprised by the amount of stuff happening and how many focal points we had. Do I look at the game, the man pouring or try and see what the waiter finds so funny? It was the first time one of these films on the DVD had done this to me and the first one that engaged.

Of course I'm not saying this is an attempt at a Short Cuts multi-layered film but it was nice to find this much movement all working together in such a tight short from Lumière.

Among the films in the "Saved from the Flames" DVD collection that have been preserved is this hand-colored item that's little more than a minute and just depicts some men playing cards with a waiter serving them some drinks. What makes this historical is that this was from what was considered cinema's first year-1895-and was made by pioneers August and Louis Lumiere. Like many of their films, this was just a candid look at people doing everyday things and nothing else. So what fascinated me was how natural the people doing their thing looked and no one seemed to realized they were being photographed. There were a couple of other Lumiere works on the DVD that were of similar naturalness. So on that note, Partie de cartes is worth a look for historical reasons.