Guy Chasing Light

Several of Alice Guy's, the world's first female filmmaker, first productions were remakes of Lumière films. Gaumont's reworking of "The Gardener" (1895), "The Fisherman at the Stream" (1897) was creative in using the same prank-punitive formula for a new setting, but this, "Les Cambrioleurs" is a plain rip-off of Lumière's prior "Poursuite sur les Toits" (1897-1898) (pay no attention to misdating on the web (as of this writing), whereby sites list Guy's film as being made and released first, in 1897 and the prior film as 1898, instead of this one as 1898, which is when actual historians date it, including Guy-scholar Alison McMahan (author of "Alice Guy Blaché: Lost Visionary of the Cinema") and the makers of the Kino Gaumont DVD set). Georges Méliès also made the similar "Sur les Toits" around the same time.

Apparently, however, plagiarism wasn't considered in quite the same way in the 19th Century as it is now, since either the Lumière company or one of its filmmakers sold or otherwise gave Gaumont and Guy their set for these two films. Whether they knew that Guy and company would use it to imitate the same chase scenario of cops-and-robbers, who knows. I doubt any of them were thinking they were making art back then, either; after all, look how the robbers treat framed paintings by tearing them over the heads of the police. Although, tellingly, in the Lumière film, the robbers are arrested by the police, whereas, here, they seem to be getting away with the crime.