The Miller and Chimney Sweep

The Miller and the Sweep (1897)

The camera is perfectly set up to capture a large flour mill in the background as we then see a man walking towards the camera with a bag of flour. He bumps into another man carrying flour and pretty soon the two of them are hitting each other. There's no doubt that by the end of the decade filmmakers were staging material to sell it to the public and there's no doubt that this film has staged events happening. With that being said, i thought what is here was actually pretty fun as the two men take some good shots at each other before being chased off by another group of people hanging to the side of the camera view.

The answer.....No, sadly not. Though miller and the sweep has to be hailed as a most whimsical cinematic treat.The drama, suspense,romance and the unidentified crowd at the end all add to the films complex storyline which must have been too much for the audiences of 1898. A enlightening experience, one for all the family!

THis is a bewildering, Absurdist Short. A miller, dressed in white, makes his way towards us from a windmill in a desolate landscape. Although the image is pared down, there is an obvious logic here. However, he is stopped by the sweep, all in black because of his work. They start pummelling each other for no particular reason - did the snooty miller insult the sooty sweep? Is this class war?

Whatever, he pelts his adversary with bags of grain which fly all over the fight, making redundant everything he had done prior to the fight, making redundant the windmill, so that all becomes as pointless as the fight. The miller's grain whitens the sweep's blackness - later Westerns wouldn't be so subtle, heroes and villains being colour-coded. Is there a racial tint here?

If this wasn't marvellous enough, the fighters are chased off the screen by a crowd of people who came from nowhere, an appropriately Kafkaesque ending to an odd story (or are they just the social conscience rising up against a fight that negates order and purpose?), and very unusual in the days of early silent cinema. This mix of comedy, surrealism, and the Absurd is an obvious forerunner for BUster Keaton, while the windmill reminds us of one of the great thrillers, Hitchcock's 'Foreign Correspondant'.

As far as ancient films are concerned, "The Miller and the Sweep" is noteworthy for being an early British comedy and particularly for being a forerunner of later chase films and slapstick comedies. The chase film was one of the more important early film genres because of its influence on the development of continuity editing. "The Miller and the Sweep" and another early chase comedy "Chinese Laundry Scene" (1894), which was made by the Edison Company and based on a vaudeville act, consist of only one shot and scene, though. The chase film's effect on multi-shot films seems to have began with "Stop Thief!" (1901), which was made by Smith's friend and neighbor in Brighton-Hove, James Williamson. The chase comedy, it seems, became popular after "Personal" (1904)--leading to the popular Pathé chase comedies, then the Keystone films and eventually the chases in Buster Keaton's movies.

In its brief minute-or-so running time, "The Miller and the Sweep" begins with some messy knockabout slapstick between a miller with his bag of flour and a chimneysweeper and his bag of soot. Their wrestling then turns into a very brief comedic chase. None of the direction is particularly exceptional, as the episode takes place entirely before a stationary camera and within a limited 52 feet of film. In the background, a flourmill serves as a landmark. According to John Barnes ("The Beginnings of the Cinema in England 1894-1901"), it was the Race Hill Mill, located in Brighton.

In a larger context, "The Miller and the Sweep" is not an especially important film, and it's rather awkwardly constructed even for 1897, but the filmmaker who made it, George Albert Smith, was one of the more important pioneers of early cinema. Many of his films after this one (which was very early in his career), in ways, surpass anything else made by others (including the more acclaimed Edwin Porter and Georges Méliès), as Smith experimented with editing, some of the earliest multi-shot films, trick effects, close-ups and scene dissection.

On a further historical note, thanks to the comparatively detailed records of Smith's film production, Barnes also mentions that Smith first failed to produce a version of "The Miller and the Sweep" on 24 June 1897. This film is his second and successful try at the subject, filmed on 24 September 1897. Additionally, the following year, Robert W. Paul remade this film with the same title, so it must have been rather popular. In the Movies Begin series, it's claimed that the subject had a tradition in comic strips and stage acts.

I watched this film on a DVD that was rammed with short films from the period. I didn't watch all of them as the main problem with these type of things that their value is more in their historical novelty value rather than entertainment. So to watch them you do need to be put in the correct context so that you can keep this in mind and not watch it with modern eyes. With the Primitives & Pioneers DVD collection though you get nothing to help you out, literally the films are played one after the other (the main menu option is "play all") for several hours. With this it is hard to understand their relevance and as an educational tool it falls down as it leaves the viewer to fend for themselves, which I'm sure is fine for some viewers but certainly not the majority. What it means is that the DVD saves you searching the web for the films individually by putting them all in one place – but that's about it.

Planktonrules says, had this film come later it might have been of no value but in 1898 it was part of early development of cinema. However I think he does it a disservice because this was a period where some films were still simple shots of normal action which relied on the novelty value of the audience seeing it on the screen more than anything else. However to me the Miller & the Sweep is an interesting piece of comedy because of its simple visual gag. Not particularly funny, but this film has two extremes and then sees them essentially discolour one another. The miller is white and gets turned black by the coal dust from the miner and vice versa due to the miller's flour.

It is not hilarious but it is a nice idea and the delivery is good in that the miller is very clean and white, while the sweep is very black – an effective juxtaposition. Not great then but I liked the use of the clashing colours and the fact that the look of the film had been designed and delivery as opposed to being a shot of an event.