ShangLuda Admirable film.

Brainsbell The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

Tayloriona Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Dana An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de) In this little slapstick comedy we see a gardener doing his day job, suspecting nothing evil until the hose suddenly stops giving water. What's going on. Surprised about the error the gardener takes a closer look at the hose hoping to find the malfunction. Bad mistake, bad bad mistake. For the reason behind it all is a little feisty boy who intentionally stepped on the hose. And what does he do the moment the gardener directs the hose right at his face to find the error. You know the answer.Completely soaked, the man finally spots the delinquent and it's time for a spanking. You get what you give.

F Gwynplaine MacIntyre I had read descriptions of this movie at least 20 years before I first saw it; inevitably, the movie is a disappointment. Actually, the Lumiere Brothers made at least two different versions of this movie, in different locations with different casts. Its title is usually given in English as 'Watering the Gardener'. This 1895 effort is the earlier version.SPOILERS COMING. A gardener is using a hosepipe to water the garden. A boy sneaks up behind him and treads on the hose, shutting off the flow. The gardener, of course, peers directly into the empty nozzle to see what's wrong. Cue the boy to lift his foot, restoring the flow and soaking the gardener. Spotting the fleeing boy, the gardener catches him and spanks him.This movie is often cited as the very first film comedy, and it surely qualifies as one of the very earliest. When I'd first read about it, I visualised the boy as being about seven or eight years old at most. In this film (both versions I've seen), he's clearly at least twelve: really too old to be engaged in this sort of mischief ... and spanking a boy of that age is not so much punitive as something else altogether.I was vaguely intrigued that the hosepipe in this movie is made of some material which causes it to kink into sections rather than flex uniformly. Gutta-percha, perhaps?The Lumiere brothers' very earliest movies were simply filmed events: documentary footage. Although this movie's action has clearly been staged for the camera, it's still historically significant as an early attempt to tell a story in the cinema medium rather than merely record events. For that reason, I'll rate this crude soaker 10 out of 10.

Snow Leopard 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.

James M. Haugh 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.