Edwin S. Porter - The Great Train Robbery (1903)

The Great Train Robbery (1903)

USA/Silent/B&W (hand-tinted)

Directed by Edwin S. Porter

Written by Scott Marble & Edwin S. Porter

Cinematography by Blair Smith & Edwin S. Porter

Cast: 

A.C. Abadie...Sheriff

Gilbert M. 'Broncho Billy' Anderson...Bandit/Shot Passenger/Tenderfoot Dancer

George Barnes

Justus D. Barnes...Bandit Who Fires at Camera

Walter Cameron...Sheriff

John Manus Dougherty Sr...Fourth Bandit

Donald Gallaher Donald Gallaher...Little Boy

Shadrack E. Graham...Child

Frank Hanaway...Bandit

Adam Charles Hayman...Bandit

Morgan Jones

Tom London...Locomotive Engineer

Robert Milasch...Trainman / Bandit

Marie Murray...Dance-Hall Dancer

Mary Snow...Little Girl

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

The Great Train Robbery (1903), directed and photographed by Edwin S. Porter - a former Thomas Edison cameraman. It was a primitive one-reeler action picture, about 10 minutes long, with 14-scenes, filmed in November 1903 - not in the western expanse of Wyoming but on the East Coast in various locales in New Jersey (at Edison's New York studio, at Essex County Park in New Jersey, and along the Lackawanna railroad). This precursor to the western film genre was based on an 1896 story by Scott Marble and shared a title with a popular contemporary stage melodrama. The Great Train Robbery was originally advertised as "a faithful duplication of the genuine 'Hold Ups' made famous by various outlaw bands in the far West." The plot was inspired by a true event that occurred on August 29, 1900, when four members of George Leroy Parker's (Butch Cassidy) 'Hole in the Wall' gang halted the No. 3 train on the Union Pacific Railroad tracks toward Table Rock, Wyoming. The bandits forced the conductor to uncouple the passenger cars from the rest of the train and then blew up the safe in the mail car to escape with about $5,000 in cash.

The film used a number of then-unconventional techniques, including composite editing, on-location shooting, and frequent camera movement. The film is one of the earliest to use the technique of cross cutting, in which two scenes are shown to be occurring simultaneously but in different locations. Some prints were also hand coloured in certain scenes. Techniques used in The Great Train Robbery were inspired by those used in Frank Mottershaw's British film A Daring Daylight Burglary, released earlier in the year. Film historians now largely consider The Great Train Robbery to be the first American action film and the first Western film with a "recognisable form" and was the most popular and commercially successful film of the pre-nickelodeon era in the USA.

In the film's 14 scenes, a narrative story with multiple plot lines was told - with elements that were copied repeatedly afterwards by future westerns - of a train holdup with six-shooters, a daring robbery accompanied by violence and death, a hastily-assembled posse's chase on horseback after the fleeing bandits, and the apprehension of the desperadoes after a showdown in the woods. The steam locomotive always provided a point of reference from different filming perspectives. The first cowboy star, Gilbert M. 'Broncho Billy' Anderson played several roles: a bandit, a passenger who was shot in the back, and a tenderfoot dancer.

In 1990, The Great Train Robbery was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

The music in this version is composed by Andreas Brink. All music is performed on a Levin guitar from ca 1930.