Watch Interrupted Bathers For Free

Overrated and overhyped

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

This print is featured as an unadvertised bonus to Kino's magnificent collection "The Movies Begin: A Treasury of Early Cinema"in the second volume, namely "The European Pioneers." The reason they call this an unadvertised bonus is because the print survives in a most blurry condition, thus it is below Kino's standard quality.In this short film, some women are bathing when some hobos come along and steal their clothes. The women then go home wearing barrels. This film is slightly amusing, but today it doesn't get any laughs as it might have back in 1902. Note that this was done the same year as Melies' infamous "A Trip to the Moon." If that is the case then you can see that this kind of film might've been appreciated better if it had been made in an earlier year, say 1899 or 1898. But anyway, this film is mildly amusing today even if it was more entertaining in its day.(Note: I plan to review all of the unadvertised bonuses at some point. This is the second of the ten, and the second one I've reviewed).

Before you answer the question from my summary, watch this 61.96-second short at least five times, using the zoom and slo-mo functions, as I did. Also, keep in mind that this piece of so-called Edison "entertainment" is from 1902, before the Hayes Code curtailed such things as Clara Bow's topless scene in the first-ever Oscar "Best Picture" WINGS (1927), let alone today's M.P.A.A. ratings system. Furthermore, do not forget that Edison is the guy who BURNED AN ELEPHANT ALIVE at Coney Island, N.Y., in front of a cheering crowd of men, to demonstrate how good his electricity was at killing things (in front of a sign reading something like "Dumbo on a stick, 25 cents, starting May 2nd"). When I watch Edison's INTERRUPTED BATHERS, I see two ruffians steal all the clothes of four women bathers, chasing them off-screen to the left, most likely to a junk yard of some sort, from which the lone survivor of the quadruple rape\triple slaying is able to salvage a piece of debris to cover her nudity until she likely is hunted down and finished off. Would Edison's cameramen prevent such an atrocity, merely re-enact a current headline, of hire the degenerates to pull it off while they filmed just enough to titillate the sort of "fan" who appreciates elephants being burned at the stake, but not enough to result in conviction by a jury bought and paid for? Knowing that the movie NETWORK's TV-News subsidized terrorists is based on the legendary Edison snuff film ring, the third option is the obvious truth.

This short comedy is not really very entertaining, relying as it does on some stale gags that can't have been all that funny even at the time. Given the material, it does tell the story clearly, but the story is neither interesting nor enjoyable. There is a stretch of film missing towards the end, but even if it were included, it would probably only fix the gap in the action, rather than adding anything significant.The setup has a group of young women swimming in a stream as two vagrants decide to try to steal the clothes that the swimmers have left on the shore. This 'comedy' idea seems to pop up every so often in long-ago movies and stories, and even the great author Chekhov used it as a plot device in one of his short stories. But this movie is not Chekhov or even close, and it tries to use the idea as the foundation for the whole plot, rather than as just one component, and that stretches it too far. The closing gag, likewise, is an old one that isn't that funny either.In general, it's good to be rather lenient in evaluating the films made in this era, but some of them are really just not all that good, and this is one of them.