[Eine lustige Geschichte am Fenster]

Three young women enter a room, open a window to the outside and then decide to throw a ball to each other. When the ball accidentally goes out the window one of them leans out to get it. The other two girls decide to play a prank on her. They raise her skirt above her waist, nail the dress down to the windowsill to prevent her getting away, laugh happily and leave the room leaving her there exposed in all her naked glory. A man enters the room (the father? a workman?) and goes into paroxysms (shock? joy?) at the sight of the naked girl.

The film is only about a minute and a half long and is one of a series of nudie films Johann Schwarzer used to make in Austria as a profitable sideline to his photography business until authorities shut his operation down in 1911. It is a film with a lot of verve and joy and it packs as much laughs in a minute and a half as some comedies back in an hour and a half. The man's mixed reaction is priceless to behold!

Schwarzer can be seen as the original comic nudie filmmaker, the antecedent of the humorous nudie films that followed in the rest of the silent era and which were still in vogue as recently as the 1970s in Denmark. It's a pity nudity became associated with violence in many films. It somehow spoiled the legacy of Schwarzer.