Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
Wintertime in Lyon. About a dozen people, men and women, are having a snowball fight in the middle of a tree-lined street. The cyclist coming along the road becomes the target of opportunity. He falls off his bicycle. He's not hurt, but he rides back the way he came, as the fight continues.
One of the Lumière brothers' early actualities, Snowball Fight (L'Bataille de boules de neige) is a remarkable historical artifact — among the earliest examples of candid, playful street filmmaking. Its Novelty is genuinely exceptional: capturing spontaneous human joy and comic incident in 1897 with a stationary camera is a singular achievement that helped define what cinema could be. The cinematography is surprisingly competent for its era, with good spatial composition along the tree-lined boulevard. However, the 'plot' is essentially nonexistent beyond the charming cyclist gag, and there is no real dramatic arc or ending to speak of — the film simply stops. Acting in the modern sense is irrelevant, though the participants feel naturally energetic rather than stiff.