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62 reviews in total

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39 out of 39 people found the following review useful:
A Truly Historic Masterpiece!, 24 February 2004

Author: (bsmith5552@rogers.com) from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

I just saw "The Great Train Robbery" in its entirety for the first time and I was truly amazed. Its hard to believe that the film is over 100 years old. It was shot from a stationary camera but it employs many of the cinematic techniques that have since become commonplace such as cross-cutting, the chase, the shootout etc. VCI Entertainment has released a marvelous 100 Year Anniversary Edition of the film in two versions...a completely silent version from the print owned by the U.S. Library of Congress and a second version with added music, color tints and sound effects.

Briefly, the story (filmed in the "wilds" of New Jersey), centers on four bandits who subdue a station agent (to keep him from sending out an alarm) and then climb aboard a train when it stops to take on water. Two of the bandits proceed to the mail car, kill the agent and make off with the loot. The others take care of the engineer and his fireman. One can imagine what the early audiences must have thought when one of the bandits suddenly throws the fireman off of the train. The cutting from the live action with the bandit and the fireman to the obvious dummy was quite innovative for the time.

The bandits then line up the passengers and rob them killing one of them as he tries to escape. They then ride the engine down the tracks to their waiting horses. Meanwhile the town folk are alerted at a local hoedown and form a posse to go after the robbers. What follows is a great little chase scene and the final showdown between the good guys and the bad guys, where you know who get what's coming to them.

The closing shot of actor George Barnes emptying his six shooter at the audience is perhaps one of the most famous shots in cinematic history. One can only imagine the effect that it must have had on the early audiences. I had always thought that this shot was at the beginning of the film. Early western pioneer "Broncho" Billy Anderson plays four roles in the film including one of the bandits.

Most of the scenes are filmed in medium to long shots. You don't really see the actors faces (except for Barnes as noted). But it is still a very good film for this or any time. It tells a complete and believable story in about 12 minutes and sets the stage for the many classic silent films that were to follow.

A truly historic cinematic experience.

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25 out of 26 people found the following review useful:
It's Easy To See How It Got Its Reputation, 11 April 2002
Author: Snow Leopard from Ohio

It's easy to see why this was such a sensation in 1903, and why today it is still considered to be an icon in movie history. You can enjoy this either as a historical landmark for its use of such a variety of then-new skills, or you can simply watch it for the story. To be sure, the plot is of a now-familiar type, but this is what so many other movies have imitated over the years.

The story-telling is very good, and it is almost not even necessary to add 'for its time', because much of it still holds up quite well. It tells an action-packed story with plenty of detail, and it uses a good variety of effective techniques to increase the excitement, suspense, and realism. From the motion effects in the scenes inside the train, to the occasional use of color tinting, to the use of outdoor scenes, almost everything works nicely. There are only a few occasions when can you tell that it is almost a century old. There are even things like some basic cross-cutting and a pretty good panning shot. There is plenty to see, and it's worth watching more than once to see what else you can notice.

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24 out of 25 people found the following review useful:
A timeless, priceless work, 6 March 2003
Author: MikeF-6 from Dallas, Texas

What can one say about an 11 minute film, which is reputed to be the first narrative motion picture to be shot in the United States? What does one compare it to when nothing had come before it? What is even more amazing is that parts of this movie are in color! The women's dresses at the dance are in color - each frame had been hand colored. The flashes from the barrels of the six shooters are red and an explosion sends up a riot of color. There is even a little girl in a red coat. Take that, Steven Spielberg!! Except for the last five seconds, all of the shots are in medium to long. The camera never moves. For each sequence, it is set in place and actors move in front of it.

It is a western, of course (shot in the wilds of New Jersey). A gang of bad guys knock out a train station clerk then board a departing train. They move to the car where there is a safe, blow the safe, stop the train and rob the passengers. Back in town, the clerk revives and tries to get help but passes out again. A little girl comes in wakes him up. The townspeople are having a dance when the clerk runs in to form a posse. The posse rides out and surrounds the gang, who is counting the loot in the woods. There is a gunfight and the robbers are killed. That is the whole story, but there is one short scene left - one of the most remarkable in film history. The all color episode lasts about 5 seconds. In medium close-up, a cowboy raises his pistol, points it directly at the camera, and fires three times. It is difficult for us to understand why this is here or what purpose it served. But when people who had never seen a movie before and didn't have any understanding of the technology first saw this man shooting at them, they screamed, fell to the floor, and ran for the door. It is also said that some in the audience pulled firearms and shot back. It is an early testament to the power that motion pictures had, even in its earliest incarnation. Thankfully, TCM ran TGTR without any modern musical accompaniment, as thousands must have seen it in the nineteen-aughts. I watched in total amazement. I was transported. Later, I reflected on how far movies had come and how little they had changed in the last 100 years. This movie is a priceless historical artifact that shows us just how much the past is still with us.

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23 out of 24 people found the following review useful:
Pioneer work possible birthplace of Western, 30 July 1999
Author: pooch-8 from Fargo, North Dakota

Arguably the first motion picture to employ the milieu of what would quickly become known as the Western genre, Edwin S. Porter's The Great Train Robbery was a smashing success with audiences (dozens of film history texts report with glee how viewers shrieked with fear and delight when a tightly-framed gunslinger pointed and fired directly at the camera) and made remarkable strides toward the establishment of longer, more narratively developed films. Porter's cutting was also among the most sophisticated to date, as multiple locations and events were suffused with a previously unseen urgency. Based on actual events, The Great Train Robbery ignited the imaginations of the scores who saw it -- making the movie one of the earliest examples of sensationalized, fictionalized screen adaptations taken from historical precedent.

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21 out of 22 people found the following review useful:
Historic action/crime thriller. A must-see for all film buffs., 6 September 2000

Author: Michael DeZubiria (miked32@hotmail.com) from Luoyang, China

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.

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19 out of 19 people found the following review useful:
Formation of Cinematic Narrative, 8 August 2003

Author: cjosephlyons from Ottawa Canada

I enjoy this film even though it is very old and compared to today's cinema, very limited in its attempt at realism. But today's cinema would not be what it is without the original innovation of cinematic devices by Edwin S. Porter, one of films first masters. His progress in narrative construction and his work in special effects techniques astonished audiences like never before. His work was limited specifically because he used the static camera affecting the impact of each of his shots. His unique and influential editing style allowed the audience to take part in the action of the film, not sitting idly watching it. The movie is 12 minutes long and is considered the first narrative film in history. The most exciting scene is when the gangsters raid the train station and rob the train. The train is a really well done mat-shot of a train pulling into the station, frightening the audience in their seats. I personally am most excited by the final closing scene of the gangster shooting his gun, aiming it directly at the audience. This audience point of view shot makes me feel like the narrative of the train robbery enticed me to cheer for the Sheriff, and the angry gangster shoots at me because I was cheering for his enemy. This film and this sequence of the gangster shooting the audience was solidified in cinematic history when Martin Scorsese pays homage in 'Goodfellas', with Joe Pesci gun barrage and sinister look.

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14 out of 15 people found the following review useful:
Film Editing Is Born, 3 January 2006

Author: brocksilvey from United States

It's hard to assign "The Great Train Robbery" a rating, as it shouldn't really be watched as a film the way we watch films now. But from a historical perspective, it's fascinating, and is an excellent example of the use of film editing, an art form then in its infancy and now an award category recognized every year at the Oscars.

Before this movie, it wasn't customary to tell multiple story lines simultaneously, but here, various activities going on in different locations are intercut to create suspense. D.W. Griffith would use this technique much more ambitiously (and combine it with many other developing film techniques) in "The Birth of a Nation" over ten years later, but credit must be given to "Train Robbery" for blazing a trail.

Also, this is the movie famous for the shot of an outlaw shooting a gun directly at the camera. I can't imagine what effect this had on audiences at the time, who were probably diving behind their chairs for cover.

Grade: A

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12 out of 13 people found the following review useful:
Porter's innovative early film, 8 May 2004
Author: didi-5 from United Kingdom

This film, often lauded as one of the first movies to include a linear narrative within its running time, came out of the Edison company over a hundred years ago, following their experiments in the previous decades with shorter topical pieces such as cockfighting, dancers, and other limited scenarios.

'The Great Train Robbery' is a simple enough story - a train is robbed, there is a shoot-out. The interesting scenes for me were the ones where the passengers are held at gunpoint while their valuables are collected, the shoot-out with its hand-coloured bursts of gunfire, and the famous final shot where a gun is fired directly at the audience. Not too frightening now, but back in those days this was quite an innovation.

Historically important and with a basic plot still in use today, this film holds significant interest for a wide audience (and will take less than a quarter of an hour of your time to view).

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8 out of 8 people found the following review useful:
A start that filmmakers should be proud of..., 1 February 2004

Author: clockert from Bergen, Norway

As an early film, this film is quite spectacular. Ok, so it's only twelve minutes, but that is twelve minutes of pure action and entertainment. When this film was made, things like special effects were hardly thought of, but notice how well the transgression from person to doll on the "throw the dead guy off the train" goes, and how nicely they have "moved the train" without moving the camera when they leave the locomotive behind.

This movie is probably the best preview to how modern westerns became, at least if you take the best twelve minutes of many westerns, the twelve where people get shot, beat up and alerted. The movie follows it's storyline perfectly, and is easy to grasp the continuance throughout the film, in all, quite a masterpiece that comes highly recommended.

Christian Lockert

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8 out of 9 people found the following review useful:
Action, Adventure in this Early Drama, 14 June 1999

Author: Lugosi31

This film was made in 1903 and was the longest one to date: twelve minutes. It has a clearly identifiable plot and this is that a band of four outlaws wreak havoc on two trains and the people on them. They are rather skilled criminals but, in the end, ... This movie is a must-see if you are interested in the dawn of the cinematographic age.

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