Horst in Translation ([email protected]) In this little slapstick comedy we see a gardener doing his day job, suspecting nothing evil until the hose suddenly stops giving water. What's going on. Surprised about the error the gardener takes a closer look at the hose hoping to find the malfunction. Bad mistake, bad bad mistake. For the reason behind it all is a little feisty boy who intentionally stepped on the hose. And what does he do the moment the gardener directs the hose right at his face to find the error. You know the answer.Completely soaked, the man finally spots the delinquent and it's time for a spanking. You get what you give.

F Gwynplaine MacIntyre I had read descriptions of this movie at least 20 years before I first saw it; inevitably, the movie is a disappointment. Actually, the Lumiere Brothers made at least two different versions of this movie, in different locations with different casts. Its title is usually given in English as 'Watering the Gardener'. This 1895 effort is the earlier version.SPOILERS COMING. A gardener is using a hosepipe to water the garden. A boy sneaks up behind him and treads on the hose, shutting off the flow. The gardener, of course, peers directly into the empty nozzle to see what's wrong. Cue the boy to lift his foot, restoring the flow and soaking the gardener. Spotting the fleeing boy, the gardener catches him and spanks him.This movie is often cited as the very first film comedy, and it surely qualifies as one of the very earliest. When I'd first read about it, I visualised the boy as being about seven or eight years old at most. In this film (both versions I've seen), he's clearly at least twelve: really too old to be engaged in this sort of mischief ... and spanking a boy of that age is not so much punitive as something else altogether.I was vaguely intrigued that the hosepipe in this movie is made of some material which causes it to kink into sections rather than flex uniformly. Gutta-percha, perhaps?The Lumiere brothers' very earliest movies were simply filmed events: documentary footage. Although this movie's action has clearly been staged for the camera, it's still historically significant as an early attempt to tell a story in the cinema medium rather than merely record events. For that reason, I'll rate this crude soaker 10 out of 10.

José Luis Rivera Mendoza (jluis1984) On December 28, 1895, thirty-three people were witnesses of history being written as the very first audience of the Lumières' Cinématographe, an innovative device that was able to project motion pictures on a screen. Motion pictures were not new for the people gathered on at Paris's Salon Indien Du Grand Café that day, as Edison's Kinetoscope (the "Peep Show") was a popular form of entertainment; however, nobody in the room was prepared to see the images projected on the screen to move as unlike the Kinetoscope, the Cinématographe allowed the movies to be seen by an audience. 10 short films shot by August and Louis Lumière were shown that historic day, most of them depicting everyday scenes like people walking out of the Lumière factory or playing cards, but one among those 10 short films was different: "L' Arroseur Arrosé", the first comedy film."L' Arroseur Arrosé", literally ("The Sprinkler Sprinkled"), is basically about a practical joke committed by a mischievous boy (Benoît Duval) to annoy a Gardener (François Clerc) who is working with his plants in Lyons. The movie begins with the Gardener watering his vegetables when the boy steps on the hose he is using to water the plants. The Gardener is surprised as the water stops flowing so he inspects the nozzle to find out what's happening. As he checks it, the boy releases the hose and the water continues flowing, spraying the gardener as it comes out of the hose with strength. Surprised by this, the Gardener quickly realizes that he's been tricked, but the boy responsible escapes running away in order to avoid being caught. The Gardener decides to chase the boy in order to punish him for his actions.When compared to the other 9 movies shown on that first screening, "L' Arroseur Arrosé" always stand out as it was remarkably different from any of the other movies in the sense that it wasn't an "actuality film", but the very first staged fictional comedy shot on film. The Lumière brothers had a preference for documentaries (actuality films) as they weren't really interested in other uses for their invention besides the scientific documentation of real life events; so it is because of this reason that the creation of "L' Arroseur Arrosé" is truly a real oddity among Lumières' movies. Anyways, not only is this movie special for those reasons, it is also one of the best looking of the 10 (and one that has survived almost intact to this date), with the brothers showing a great early use of cinematography to frame the film.In its barely 50 seconds of duration, "L' Arroseur Arrosé", opened the way to slapstick and pantomime in film, as the movie showed that it was possible to use the new invention to make pure entertainment, and that there was an extremely high unused potential in the Cinématographe. It wouldn't be too far of a stretch to claim that comedy films were born in this movie. While the reasons behind the inclusion of this film among 9 documentaries is odd, it was quite probably that this was the film that inspired a notable member of that first audience to make fictional movies aimed to entertain: Georges Méliès, who would later become a famous filmmaker on his own (and would direct a remake of this very film too). 9/10

chriscollins405 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.