Watch The Sprinkler Sprinkled For Free

Great Film overall

A Masterpiece!

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

and I have seen The Charlie Chaplin shorts, Electrocuting an Elephant and The Execution of Mary Queen Of Scots This has a too thin plot line to keep anyone's attention even for a second of this movie the worst short film ever is Electrocuting an Elephant This is about some kid stepping on a gardener's hose he checks to see what stopped the water flowing he steps off it and he doesn't run away from him in the right direction he was supposed to run so the Gardener couldn't see the kid but he had to run away so the Gardener can see the kid and he punishes him for a while. How can anyone like this crap and I have seen Disaster Movie. All in all where's that 1 minute

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

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.

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.