Partie d'écarté

This is a Lumiere short featuring a popular element in early documentaries: a card game. If you've seen tons of these early actualities like I have then no doubt you may have seen several other shorts featuring this topic. The other film I've seen with this subject is "Partie de Cartes" a Georges Melies film (his first actually) and the set-up is the same. There are differences to the films though: Melies's version features a waitress, this one has a comical waiter; a joke in a newspaper is involved in Melies's film, here we've just got the waiter laughing to end the short

The movement in this one is limited making it less of a motion picture, but the subject is a comical one and must have amused people at the time. Today it is still pleasant to watch and is a lot less documentary-like than the Brothers' other work. In fact, I bet you it was staged due to everyone in the film being either family members or friends (and that includes the waiter).

This film is also known as, Card Game (1896), Partie de Cartes (1896) and A Quiet Game of Écarté (1896). The Messers Lumière at Cards (1896), is a great pioneering film. The scene is clearly staged, because the film is considered the first alcoholic beverage commercial ever made. The main guy at the table, owned either a beer, wine or alcohol factory. He was very popular back then, so people seeing him pour and drink his beverage on film, was technically free advertising. To keep things in order, all of the film was staged, although the waiter does overact a little. Are these the first hired actors maybe? Probably not, but the idea is there and the seeds to narrative drama, begin to grow, in 1896. The Messers Lumière at Cards (1896), is a Lumiere classic, with their pioneering glow, once again, making cinematic discoveries, with every film they release.

9.3 (A MyGrade) = 9 IMDB.

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.

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.

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.