L'arroseur arrosé was one of 10 films included in the Lumière brothers' historic first presentation of projected moving images to a paying public in Paris in December 1895, but it's radically different from the rest of the programme. Most of the films are documentary records of everyday activity, and while there's an element of staging to some of them, including some professional entertainers and party tricks, none seem to have been mounted to take specific advantage of the new medium — except this one. It's often described as the first known fictional film and the first known comedy film to be exhibited theatrically.
The gag is simple and now seems well worn, but it's no doubt still capable of making children laugh when they encounter it for the first time. A gardener, played by the director's own gardener, is watering with a hose. A mischievous youth stands on the hose to block it, releasing his foot just as the gardener peers down the hose to investigate, with, as they say, hilarious consequences. As with much comedy, part of the pleasure is in observing the discomfort of others — the victim's drenching, the mischief maker's subsequent corporal punishment.
Like all the early Lumière films the action is presented as a single long shot and it's interesting to compare how the scenario might be treated today — perhaps an establishing shot, a cut to the miscreant approaching, a cut back to confirm the gardener's lack of awareness, and closeups of the foot on the hose so the audience is clear what is going on, and of the gardener's face as it's hosed for maximum Schadenfreude.
It's doubtful that contemporary audiences appreciated the film's distinctiveness and of course they would have had no idea how much it presaged what was to come. Given that the film appeared alongside single shot depictions of homebound factory workers, photography conference delegates disembarking from a boat trip and passers-by on a Lyon square, they might well have assumed that the camera fortuitously happened to be rolling as the incident played out spontaneously
The gag is simple and now seems well worn, but it's no doubt still capable of making children laugh when they encounter it for the first time. A gardener, played by the director's own gardener, is watering with a hose. A mischievous youth stands on the hose to block it, releasing his foot just as the gardener peers down the hose to investigate, with, as they say, hilarious consequences. As with much comedy, part of the pleasure is in observing the discomfort of others — the victim's drenching, the mischief maker's subsequent corporal punishment.
Like all the early Lumière films the action is presented as a single long shot and it's interesting to compare how the scenario might be treated today — perhaps an establishing shot, a cut to the miscreant approaching, a cut back to confirm the gardener's lack of awareness, and closeups of the foot on the hose so the audience is clear what is going on, and of the gardener's face as it's hosed for maximum Schadenfreude.
It's doubtful that contemporary audiences appreciated the film's distinctiveness and of course they would have had no idea how much it presaged what was to come. Given that the film appeared alongside single shot depictions of homebound factory workers, photography conference delegates disembarking from a boat trip and passers-by on a Lyon square, they might well have assumed that the camera fortuitously happened to be rolling as the incident played out spontaneously