Jumping the Blanket

In this 41 seconds long film we see four men stand holding a couverture(blanket in french) while a fifth man wearing a hat stands watching. A sixth man is seeing running toward them trying to jump onto it. He is trying this unsuccessfully twice in a row failing to jump high enough onto the blanket. On the third attempt he is able to jump and spin in the air, nearly clearing in the blanket. His fourth attempt is a successful one and he rolls on the blanket and land on his feet at the other side of the blanket. Then he runs for a final attempt but he gets stuck in the blanket even the four men attempts to help him. This is quite amusing but nothing else happens because this film like any other Lumiere Films is a very old film and should be viewed from a historical perspective!

Le saut à la couverture (1895)

This French film is also known as JUMPING THE BLANKET and that's pretty much what you see. The camera is stationed with a group of men holding a blanket. Another man then starts running and jumps over and on the blanket several time. Obviously you're watching an actuality movie so one shouldn't expect any sort of plot or anything like that. The main draw to this film is the fact that you're watching a form of entertainment that was obviously done back in the day so it's fascinating getting to see them play it. There's obviously nothing ground-breaking here but fans of the genre should enjoy this for what it is.

This film, along with nine other films, was shown at a Paris, mini-film festival, by pioneering filmmakers, the Lumiere brothers, in December of 1895. Those crazy, whacky acrobats from Lumiere's earlier film, Horse Trick Riders (1895), shown during the mini-festival, about four minutes before this film, return here for the 1895 version of a sequel, in Jumping the Blanket (1895). Four guys hold onto a blanket and a fifth guy... jumps over it. Home movies for paying customers in the eighth movie ever shown to an audience for a fee. One of the first ever films needing a better acrobat instructor. It looks more like an embarrassing home movie with the drunk neighbors, but it was one of the first motion pictures ever made and that is saying something.

6.7 (C- MyGrade) = 7 IMDB.

Psychologist Sigmund Freud analyzed this for one of his college assignments. His roomate was a football player (who happened to walk in their dorm room wearing his football uniform when this film was on).