L'arroseur arrosé

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.

The Sprinkler Sprinkled (1895)

*** (out of 4)

This early film from Louis Lumiere is considered by many to be the first actual comedy ever made. At just 40 seconds we see a gardner watering some plants when another man steps on the hose. For the laugh, the gardner looks straight into the hose to see what's wrong and..... Well, you know what happens. I must admit that this "comedy" actually does work and I'm going to guess it happened by accident by the timing of the two men is actually quite good and especially the gardner. His reaction to being sprayed with water was extremely funny and his chace is also quite funny. Again, there's certainly nothing ground-breaking here other than the fact that it was the first comedy and that it actually works.

Louis Lumiere concentrated mostly on making slice-of-life movies during his 1895 filming with his newly invented camera, This is one of the few staged comedy skits that he produced and was made outdoors with his highly-mobile Cinematograph. A loose translation of the title would be "The Gardiner is Hosed." As scripted: a boy steps on a hose stopping a flow of water. The gardener looks at the hose end as the boy lifts his foot allowing the water to flow full force into the gardiner's face. The gardiner chases, catches and drags the boy before the camera to give him half-hearted, almost-comical spanking. Boy leaves and gardiner continues his watering chores. Strangley enough this simple comedy was re-filmed, during the next year, by other filmmakers in England. For another of Lumiere's comedy skits see "The Transformation of Hats" which starred Felcien Trewey, an English vaudeville actor and friend of the Lumieres, who appears in at least three of Louis' movies.

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.

In the earliest motion picture experiments, such as those by Louis Le Prince, William K.L. Dickson and others, the novelty of reproduced motion was of satisfactory interest. From the beginning of commercial exhibition, however, filmmakers staged scenes, events, or stories, to create further interest and entertainment. Although even in the earliest experiments, the filmmaker usually staged events for the camera, the intent wasn't intrinsically for entertainment. Magic lantern slides and other precursors to motion pictures already included elaborate stories in their programs, and Emil Reynaud projected animation stories to audiences near the end of the 19th Century. To point to a precise film as the beginning of stories in the art form is a futile task.

Even slightly before this film, "The Sprayer Sprayed", the Edison Company's "Blacksmith Scene", for example, was a fictional, staged recreation. "The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots" or "Chinese Laundry Scene" weren't actualities or mere examples of reproduced motion, either. The latter was even comedic. Nonetheless, "The Sprayer Sprayed" does standout for its explicit fictional staging for the purpose of amusing spectators. In a limited sense, the film consists of a story. It was also based on a newspaper cartoon or several.

It's a simple, one shot scene with a fixed camera position, where the prank is a boy stepping on a hose while the gardener is watering his garden. The gardener looks into the hose to see what's amiss, whereupon the boy releases the pressure of his foot from the hose and thus spraying the gardener in the face. The gardener chases after the boy--away from the camera--and brings the boy back to the forefront of the frame to lightly punish him. This last part, of bringing the boy back to the forefront of the camera's view, primitively and probably unintentionally emphasizes the staging of the scene. Camera movement hadn't been invented yet, but soon would be with these new lightweight cameras. The Lumière cameraman Alexander Promio may've introduced camera movement with "Panorama du Grand Canal vu d'un bateau" (1896).

Furthermore, an elaborate story of multiple shots and scenes was technically impossible at the time, as the Latham Loop had just been invented and had not yet become a standard part of cameras and projectors. Without it, too much celluloid created tension that threatened to break the film. Editing was also a risky affair because of this. Soon, Robert W. Paul, George Albert Smith, James Williamson and others would cement the multi-shot story film. The first multiple-shot films may have originated in the actuality films, such as "Return of Lifeboat" (1897), though.

Even with technological and narrative advancements in film-making, the non-narrative films, such as the actualitiés, continued to coexist with narrative cinema and were dominant for longer than the aforementioned handicaps demanded. "The Sprayer Sprayed" is an important step, however, in the direction of story films. It includes an outdoor, actuality type setting in addition to its brief and amusing staged plot. Other early Lumiere films, and films by others, were directed and staged, but not explicitly; the direction of the actuality films were disguised in a sense. This film was different. Furthermore, its purpose as entertainment is evident in the famous poster illustrated by Marcellin Auzolle where an audience is marveling and laughing at the scene of the gardener sprayed in the face.

The immense popularity of this film is evident in its numerous remakes. The Lumiere Company remade it a couple times, and the Edison Company, Alice Guy, Georges Méliès, G.A. Smith and probably just about every other early filmmaker remade it. Bamforth Films remade it as late as 1900 as "The Biter Bit".

(Note: This is the sixth in series of my comments on 10 "firsts" in film history. The other films covered are Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge (1888), Blacksmith Scene (1893), Annabelle Serpentine Dance (1895), The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots (1895), La Sortie des usines Lumiere (1895), L' Arrivée d'un train à La Ciotat (1896), Panorama du Grand Canal vu d'un bateau (1896), Return of Lifeboat (1897) and Panorama of Eiffel Tower (1900).)