User Reviews

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.

... the gag!

The Lumiere brothers didn't just invent cinema, an art without which IMDb wouldn't exist, they reinvented the gag, an art (yes, an art) without which the French expression "Sprinkler Sprinkled" wouldn't exist, not to mention... cinematic comedy, you know... Chaplin, Keaton, Lewis, Carrey etc... if laughter could be counted in royalties, well, there's always a little cent owed to that seminal piece of celluloid from 1895.

The joke is as old as the Lascaux paintings: a man is watering his garden, a naughty boy steps on the hose and... I won't spoil the ending, I know what goes after is a joke even someone with a QI lower than his shoe size would guess. Still, it works. And we laugh. You know what? Because the essence on the joke doesn't lie on its premise but on the anticipation, the second of the three-act structure. Set-up. Anticipation. Punch-line.

We know the punch-line, which weakens the comedic effect a bit, but we enjoy it nonetheless because the anticipation prepared us for the laugh, if the predictable outcome happens, we're happy because it satisfies our intellect somewhat, comedy appeals in an intellectual way you know... of course the gag doesn't reinvent the wheel but how can you get a twist on that story anyway?

So, what we've got here is the shortest but the most primitive comedy ever, a short intended to make its targeted people laugh, maybe we grew too sophisticated not to appreciate that kind of humor but I dare even the most skeptical one not to let a little chuckle slip. Sure, this is no Chaplin or Keaton but this is comedy in its rawest form and the Lumière brothers got it right, all you've got to do is toy with your audience's anticipation, whatever will happen will happen and will make them laugh...

There's no need to get over-analytical in a ''sprinkler-sprinkled' short, let's just say the film has one merit: it proved that the silver screen needed to provide one emotion and the most universal one, the one that could work with that initial format: laughter, and that it happened so shortly after the first film ever proves how essential comedy was to a Boeotian audience.

It's one thing to show a train arriving or workers going for lunch, but a comedy has one edge over any filmed stuff: it tells a story.

Set-up, anticipation/ action, punch-line, maybe in this simple trilogy, you've got the seeds that planted the art of storytelling, comedy as the essence of film-making. One of the reasons Chaplin is the most emblematic figure of cinema is that three out of the four pillars that made the foundations of cinema is comedy, and "The Sprinkler Sprinkled" constitutes the birth of the visual gag.

The film might even be the first to have an official "villain" even if it's a little prankster and he gets his comeuppance in the end, so even this limited range of plot points, there's an Aesop after all.

Simple but essential...

(a short review maybe, but what did you expect for a 30-second short?)

This Lumière classic would always be worth seeing simply for its significance as a pioneering effort in using motion pictures to tell a fictional story. It also retains its interest as a brief but amusing story in itself, which sticks in your mind despite its simplicity.

The old practical joke with the hose, which forms the premise of "L'arroseur arrosé", is one familiar to almost everyone, since we've all either played it on someone or had it played on us. Maybe that's one reason why, as light as it is, this works pretty well despite the relatively simple technique. Another reason is that the opening situation is set up well, establishing a peaceful scene of a man watering his garden, before the main action begins.

For such an early effort, it's carried off quite well. Once the action gets going, you can see that the actors are a bit self-conscious of the camera's location, and there are a couple of brief awkward moments as a result. The man playing the gardener, though, is very believable in his responses to the situation. And anyway, this little movie is almost beyond a critique, in view of its good-natured energy, not to mention all of the later ideas that grew out of this simple footage.

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

A gardener is watering the garden, a hose in his hands, and the famous practical joke that exists together with a water hose is caught on film by Louis Lumière. A boy steps on the hose, waits until the gardener starts looking into the hose and lets the water go again. The gardener ends up wet in the face. This quite funny Lumière piece should have ended there, I guess, but we also get to see how the gardener gets his revenge. Slapstick was already pretty entertaining in 1895.

A fictional little film from Lumière, the first practical joke on film. I enjoyed this piece, almost a minute long, very much. Like Lumière's 'La Sortie des Usines Lumière' and 'L'Arrivée d'un Train à la Ciotat' it has its own place in the history of the cinema. Definitely worth watching!

It seems like every early filmmaker ripped off the Lumiere's comedy - and yet it occurred to none of them to add something new.

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).)

Technically, 1 year later, there is no big evolution: this production is till french, runs for only 1 minute with the camera still and put outdoor!

Beyond technology, this movie brings a lot of innovations:

• it's a comedy with a funny script

• the director is a woman !

• it's already a remake !

Indeed, i understand this prank had been already filmed by the Lumieres brothers in 1895. It's very hard to tell which movie belongs to who as the videos of two movie are often wrongly labeled on internet.

Anyway, this one is still a benchmark in french culture as we have heard about it at least one time in our life and the expression is really famous in our language!

I remember watching this as part of film studies in high school and completely forgot about it until 10 minutes ago when my friend mentioned it.

Comedy now is (well not always) more complex, but sometimes the simple stuff is just as funny

Alice Guy, the first woman film director -- indeed, the first film director -- directs this remake of the famous Lumiere comedy.

At this time, there was no way for a film maker to copyright a film, so uncredited remakes of popular films was very common. Because the films were sold outright to anyone who wished to show them, they were offered in catalogues. A canny catalogue would have as many different films as possible and, since remaking the film would mean the original film maker would not have to be paid a profit, it was often cheaper to remake it, or to simply buy a copy and reprint it as often as desired.

This situation would not last. Soon enough film makers would plaster their trade marks over their sets. This would give them protection against others simply reprinting their work. In the United States, several of the production companies would print every frame of a film on paper, bind it into a book and submit the book for copyright protection. These "paper prints" would become the source for early works. In the 1910s the US copyright code would be rewritten to include films.

In the meantime, Gaumont simply had Madame Guy reshoot this film.

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.

The first fully staged fiction and comedy film is of a piece with the Lumieres previous work, full of energy contained. In 'Sortie d'Usine', a calm street scene was broken by exiting workers; in 'Repas de Bebe', a model family unit was decentred by a dribbling boy; in 'Demolition d'un mur', the hierarchical order of boss and workers is disrupted by a crashing wall. In this case a rural idyll, a man, a worker at one with nature, with his work, is interrupted by an idle interloper; work and purpose vs. play and sensation; documentary vs fiction, fantasy, escapism?

David Thomson claims that the film works because the audience is made complicit with the boy's antics. This is true, and the boy is subversive - he derails the work, the harmony between man and nature, man and work. He inflicts physical harm without being proximate to his victim, like a gangster shooting from a distance. He forces the man to abandon his fixed spot to apprehend him.

But he IS punished,and he is slapped for his deed, brought, as critics have noted, nearer the screen so the audience can see, as if the man is punishing us for enjoying the prank. Disruption will not be tolerated - the boy is cast out of the frame; harmony is restored.

All the while, as in 'Repas', nature looks on, indifferent immemorial, ignorant of the reactionary and the revolutionary alike. The Lumieres are very prescient in this film, understanding that they will be unable to hold onto the dutiful, purposeful hose for much longer; that the irresponsible pranksters are waiting to take over, to spray refreshing water over their audience's faces, an audience rather averse to the Lumieres' patronising ideals of moral elevation and 'science'.

How cute, first fiction film, a new world that opened up, the magical world for us moviegoers... Passionate... How cute, first fiction film, a new world that opened up, the magical world for us moviegoers... Passionate...

'The Sprinkler Sprinkled (1895)' is, to my knowledge, the first example of a joke ever put to film. It depicts a young boy pulling a practical joke on a gardener, one that starts with him stepping on his hose. It's a short, sweet and charming little skit. It's inoffensive and all in good fun, even if it does end in an extended spanking. More importantly, it's actually quite funny. It isn't hilarious, don't get me wrong, but it's an amusing little sequence that should put a smile on your face. That's impressive considering its age; it's over 125 years old at this point. It has a bit more to it than the other early examples of cinema, such as Workers Leaving The Lumière Factory (1895) and The Arrival Of A Train At La Ciotat (1986), so it arguably holds up better. I mean, it actually has a simple story to it. According to IMDb, it's the first fully staged fictional film to have ever been shown. As such, it's incredibly historically important. It's pretty good regardless of this, though, which is actually rare for films of its age. For what it is, it's great. 8/10.

At the time of the release of the film, it was something incredible, amazing. People who had never seen anything like it were delighted. But now this film looks more like a tik-tok prank than a movie. The plot is practically absent here, and what plot can fit into such a short film, the film does not cause laughter, not even a smile. The only good thing is the atmosphere of that time.

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.

This film is considered as being the second film ever exhibited to a paying audience. It plays a major role in film history, as being the first movie, that has a fictionalized plot. It also is the first comedy ever shown in a movie theater setting. You can easily find this film with many of the other Lumiere films easily on YouTube these days. Being as they are almost 130 years old, they are part of the public domain and easily can be found. In the 21st century, this has allowed film fans and aspiring filmmakers to take this film and remaster it in color, 4K, 50fps, whatever you want. Either way, the film is actually pretty good, being only 46 seconds long. The comedy revolves around an old trick, but still garners an emotional chuckle from you when you see it. Of course, it does deserve an A+, because it is one of the first movies ever. The film is also known as the Gardener (1895), or L'Arroseur Arrosé (1895).

9.9 (A+ MyGrade) = 10 IMDB.

The Lumiere brothers were great characters who were innovative for their time and their work, despite the years, is still Memorable and especially this one!.

This 1895 footage is considered the first comedy film in history, it is about a Gardener who is watering his plants but a Boy plays a prank on him by stepping on the hose making the Gardener take a look at it and then the boy lets go the hose and the gardener ends up getting wet himself from anger, he chases the boy and hits him in the butt to later continue with his work.

It's not the funniest thing in the world but it was what started it all!.

This footage has a lot of historical value due to being the first comedy movie in history and it was a breakthrough for its time.

I have not said too much because it is a short movie and easy to summarize but I think this is enough.

For what I said before, I give this movie an 8.

Compared to projects from Reynaud and Muybridge, this is a full feature length film. "L'arroseur arrose (The Waterer Watered)" is about a forty-four second motion picture of a boy playing a prank on a man watering his garden. In other words, it's perfect TikTok material. In fact, I bet I could load it to TikTok and claim that these were the original inventors of TikTok until a Chinese developer stole the idea.

"The Waterer Watered" was shot in Lyon, France in the spring of 1895. It is very basic, but supremely suitable given the technology back then. I'm sure a simple film like this gave people all sorts of ideas of what could be done even given the short duration.

The Lumiere Brothers, Auguste and Louis Lumiere, reportedly made the first projected films ever. By today's standards, these films look rather crude because they mostly didn't feature any sort of plot but were mostly scenes of everyday life. Believe it or not, at this time ANYTHING would pass for entertainment--so long as it moved. "L'Arroseur Arrose" (aka "The Tables Turned on the Gardener" or "The Watered Watered" and known in some circles as "The Sprinkler Sprinkled" or "The Sprayer Sprayed") not only is a moving picture (wow, how cool, right?) but it TELLS A STORY! AND IT'S A FUNNY ONE! AND IT'S A LAUGH RIOT!! Okay, so it's not. But it was for the time. Today the gag is so old it doesn't work at all and thus the main reason to watch this short is because of the historical significance. However, I have something to say about this significance. Yes, this is considered the first comedy by many. And I'm not denying how important it is in cinematic history. But the truth is, this is not the first filmed comedy ever made. One year before, the Edison Manufacturing Company had performers Phil Doretto and Robetta star in several kinetoscope films of their comedy routine. The one surviving film of these three shorts is "Chinese Laundry Scene" which was filmed in Edison's "Black Maria" studio and while simply a filming of this routine, THAT short can be considered the first comedy. This one remains important as ONE of the first comedies, but not as THE first comedies.

On a side note, this gag was copied a lot by other filmmakers. One of French Cinemagician Georges Melies's first films, called "Watering the Flowers" is believed to have been a remake (though it is now lost). There is also a Bamforth version of the film available from 1899 called "The Biter Bit" which is an elaboration on the original skit.

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.