The Great Train Robbery (1903)

Writers:

Release Date:

1 December 1903 (USA)

Genre:

Short | Action | Crime | Western

Plot:

A group of bandits stage a brazen train hold-up, only to find a determined posse hot on their heels.

Plot Keywords:

1900s | Daughter | USA | Lunch | Railway

Awards:

1 win

Cast

Tom London

Runtime:

12 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White (hand-colored)

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Silent

Filming Locations:

Dover, New Jersey, USA

Company:

Edison Manufacturing Company

Trivia:

The film uses simple editing techniques (each scene is a single shot) and the story is mostly linear (with only a few "meanwhile" moments) but it represents a significant step in movie making, being one of the first "narrative" movies.

Goofs:

Continuity: After the bandits have robbed the passengers they run towards the rear of the train instead of towards the front, where their getaway locomotive is waiting. In the next shot, they are seen running towards the locomotive.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Goodfellas (1990)

Historic action/crime thriller. A must-see for all film buffs.

The Great Train Robbery was filmed only a couple of years into the 20th century, and when you watch it, its age is quite obvious. However, when you watch movies like this, you need to transport yourself back to the time period in which it was created and kind of watch the film through eyes that haven't been subjected to spectacularly visual films like The Matrix or Terminator 2.

Edwin Porter made a ground-breaking film with The Great Train Robbery. Sure, the scenes were very simple and the film is so blurry that you can't make out a single face (this is also a result of the total lack of close-up shots), but in 1903 people watched this film and were stunned. It was hugely successful because it was one of the first films in the world to be made that actually told a story. Previously, films were made mainly to show off the technology of the "moving picture," and the public loved them because they had never seen such a thing before. But when Porter came along with The Great Train Robbery, the path of motion pictures changed dramatically because people began to realize that these films could tell stories just as well as they could show water lapping on the beach or factory workers getting off of work or people jumping into a lake. These were the type of films that were made in the 1890s and early 1900s. The Great Train Robbery is an extremely short film, but it is an interesting story that is made even more fascinating because of the fact that everything that happens on the screen happened nearly 100 years ago. It's like looking at a piece of history.