IMDb title #0000014: 'L'arroseur Arrosé' (1895, Louis Lumière)
Cinema's first comedy. Cinema's first fictional narrative film. And also the first instance in which a promotional poster was commissioned for a specific film.
'The Waterer Watered' is significant in film history for all these reasons. As you see above, the entire film is a single anarchic comedic bit. Lumière's film was incredibly popular and influential in its own time as well. In a time when the novelty of motion pictures was enough to attract audiences to look on in awe at a train arriving at a station or workers leaving a factory (amongst other mundanities of everyday life), along comes Lumière with a simple make-believe story with a comedic gag at the centre of it.
Several of the Lumière brothers' contemporaries remade or outright ripped off this film in the wake of its release. Among these many rip-offs included Georges Méliès's lost 1896 version 'L'Arroseur', and Bamforth & Co's 1899 British remake titled 'The Biter Bit'. Years later, Francois Truffaut would pay homage to the film with a gag in his second short film, 'Les Mistons' (1957).