The Miller and the Sweep

The Miller and the Sweep (1897)

The camera is perfectly set up to capture a large flour mill in the background as we then see a man walking towards the camera with a bag of flour. He bumps into another man carrying flour and pretty soon the two of them are hitting each other. There's no doubt that by the end of the decade filmmakers were staging material to sell it to the public and there's no doubt that this film has staged events happening. With that being said, i thought what is here was actually pretty fun as the two men take some good shots at each other before being chased off by another group of people hanging to the side of the camera view.

THis is a bewildering, Absurdist Short. A miller, dressed in white, makes his way towards us from a windmill in a desolate landscape. Although the image is pared down, there is an obvious logic here. However, he is stopped by the sweep, all in black because of his work. They start pummelling each other for no particular reason - did the snooty miller insult the sooty sweep? Is this class war?

Whatever, he pelts his adversary with bags of grain which fly all over the fight, making redundant everything he had done prior to the fight, making redundant the windmill, so that all becomes as pointless as the fight. The miller's grain whitens the sweep's blackness - later Westerns wouldn't be so subtle, heroes and villains being colour-coded. Is there a racial tint here?

If this wasn't marvellous enough, the fighters are chased off the screen by a crowd of people who came from nowhere, an appropriately Kafkaesque ending to an odd story (or are they just the social conscience rising up against a fight that negates order and purpose?), and very unusual in the days of early silent cinema. This mix of comedy, surrealism, and the Absurd is an obvious forerunner for BUster Keaton, while the windmill reminds us of one of the great thrillers, Hitchcock's 'Foreign Correspondant'.

This is pretty good slapstick - it's a good movie for its time, and even if it were a sequence in a movie a little later on in the silent era, it would still be pretty good. The scenario is based on an idea that at the time was often used in music hall sketches and the like, but as with a lot of such ideas, the film-makers still had to adapt it so as to overcome the limitations of movie-making in the 19th century.

The simple story highlights a confrontation between a miller dressed in white, who is carrying a bag of flour, and a chimney sweep covered in dark soot. The fracas that ensues has some good moments, and it uses the basic idea pretty well.

Although a stage version at the time could have added extra humor by making use of dialogue, the film-makers instead added to the basic setup by using an outdoor setting, and by adding some extra material at the end.

So, besides being funny, it's a resourceful feature and a very early example of good technique in adapting stage material to the different needs of the screen.

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.

Planktonrules says, had this film come later it might have been of no value but in 1898 it was part of early development of cinema. However I think he does it a disservice because this was a period where some films were still simple shots of normal action which relied on the novelty value of the audience seeing it on the screen more than anything else. However to me the Miller & the Sweep is an interesting piece of comedy because of its simple visual gag. Not particularly funny, but this film has two extremes and then sees them essentially discolour one another. The miller is white and gets turned black by the coal dust from the miner and vice versa due to the miller's flour.

It is not hilarious but it is a nice idea and the delivery is good in that the miller is very clean and white, while the sweep is very black – an effective juxtaposition. Not great then but I liked the use of the clashing colours and the fact that the look of the film had been designed and delivery as opposed to being a shot of an event.

A fine ironic visual gag takes place in front of the spectacular backdrop of a twirling windmill. But who are those people who rush across screen at the end: customers? relatives? One of the earliest enigmas in cinematic history perhaps. Well worth a minute of your time.