Sprinkler Sprinkled (1895)
by popegrutch
This short by the brothers Lumière is often identified as the world’s “first comedy” film. It may also be one of the first in which a situation is staged specifically for the camera. In this instance, a man is seen spraying water over some plants, while, unbeknownst to him, a child sneaks up to the hose and places his foot on it. The water stops, and the gardener’s first instinct is to look down the hose, at which point the boy lifts his foot and the water sprays into the man’s face. He then chases the boy and “chastises” him with a spanking. This has all the familiar elements of slapstick, including the smaller, playful hero getting the better of the sterner, larger victim, as well as the chase and the punishment. Of course, all of this pre-existed film in the form of vaudeville and pantomime, but the Lumières deserve some credit for seeing that it would work as well on a screen as on a stage, at a time when it hadn’t yet been established what “moving pictures” were really for. While it is simple and slight by our more sophisticated standards, this retains a naïve charm and pleasant simplicity.
Original Title: L’arroseur Arrosé
Director: Louis Lumière
Run Time: 46 seconds
You can watch it for free: here.
Century Film Project 
[…] the producer, one of the oldest stereotypes in Hollywood. The scene goes so far as to recreate “The Sprinkler Sprinkled,” with Tomei/Normand as the victim, showing that she understood so little about movies as to be […]
[…] to get a laugh in just a short time and without the benefit of sound. It reminds me somewhat of “The Sprinkler Sprinkled,” although I wouldn’t call it a remake. A fellow in a Huck Finn-like costume sits down on a […]
[…] known movies, like “Workers Leaving the Factory,” “A Train Coming into a Station,” and “The Sprinkler Sprinkled,” it was shown to a live audience on December 28, 1895, the date that many use to mark the birth […]
[…] I don’t really think knowing which is “first” is all that important (though I’d submit “The Sprinkler Sprinkled” as a good candidate for having a beginning, a middle, and an end); what’s interesting is the […]
[…] Continuing with my theme of 19th-Century dance videos for this week (not what I had planned, but sometimes you follow a lead where it takes you), here is a movie of the same Annabelle Moore I talked about yesterday, taken one year later and formally identified as a “serpentine” dance, as in the case of the German film reviewed on Monday. In this case, we are fortunate to have a hand-tinted color copy preserved, often shown as one of the first examples of color motion picture film. The color adds to the ethereal and unreal qualities of the dance, which again emphasizes the flowing robes of the dancer. The commentator on “Edison: The Invention of the Movies” makes the interesting point that these types of dances were popular film subjects because you could start from anywhere and end anywhere, looping it several times without really interrupting the action or making it seem to jump. This differs it to more linear films like “A Train Coming into a Station” or early narratives like “A Sprinkler Sprinkled.” […]