Partie de cartes
1896 film by Louis Lumière
Partie de cartes (also known as Card Game and The Messers. Lumière at Cards (USA), or A Quiet Game of Écarté) is an 1895 French black-and-white, silent short film directed and produced by Louis Lumière and starring Antoine Féraud.
Plot
Three older men, wearing hats and smoking cigars, are sitting at a patio. Two of the men are playing cards (Écarté) at a table while the third man sits watching. As the game continues a (younger) waiter walks across carrying a tray with a bottle of wine and glasses on it. The man sitting at the table then proceeds to pour the drinks while the waiter observes the card game.
Production
It was filmed by means of the Cinématographe, an all-in-one camera, which also serves as a film projector and developer. As with all early Lumière films, this film was made in a 35 mm format with an aspect ratio of 1.33:1.
The production was shot at Villa du Clos des Plages in La Ciotat, France.
Cast
Antoine Féraud (waiter?)
Antoine Lumière as Man playing cards (uncredited)
Félicien Trewey as Man playing cards to the right (uncredited)
Alphonse Winckler as Man playing cards (uncredited)
Current status
Given its age, this short film is available to freely download from the Internet.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Partie de cartes” is 1896 film by Louis Lumière. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Partie, cartes and film, not as a finished interpretation.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 21, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q1570686. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1895.
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This entry incorporates text from “Partie de cartes” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.