1903: THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY

Director:  Edwin S. Porter
Length:  12 minutes

   “The Great Train Robbery” is that other famous movie from the first era of motion pictures.  They always come in twos, don’t they?  Peter and Paul, Hamilton and Jefferson, Kirby and Ditko, Biggie and Tupac...  I’ve seen this called the first Western movie, but I’m not sure you couldn’t find an earlier one if you tried hard enough.  It is, however, the first movie spotlighted so far that was made in America.  Woo!  Go America!  U – S – A!  U – S – A!

   The director Edwin Porter was probably the most important American filmmaker of the 19-oughts.  Just about every research source I’m using credits him as pioneering narrative storytelling in film, and specifically “The Great Train Robbery” is cited as introducing crosscutting—cutting back and forth between two locations to portray simultaneous action.  It also pioneered the technique of matting one shot within another—the predecessor to greenscreening.  You see this during the scene on the boxcar, when the trees are visible rushing by through the window.  But I don't really get off much on the technical aspects of edition, to be honest... Plus, I can’t just keep talking about how this-movie-or-that pioneered this-or-that, or else it’s gonna get really tedious.

   The story is this:  four bandits rob some guy at a train station.  I think he might be a ticket salesman?  We don’t really have trains where I live, so I’m not sure.  The bandits catch up to the train, rob it, and get away on horseback.  But meanwhile... this is where the crosscutting comes in... the maybe-ticket-salesman is found by his daughter and freed, and he alerts a posse of vigilantes.  The posse catches up to the bandits and guns them down.  To hell with due process, mow the fuckers down!  U – S – A!  U – S – A!

   To be completely frank, this movie is awfully boring.  Yeah, yeah, I know...it’s a century old, and I shouldn’t be too judgmental, but come on!  The last movie I saw was about a colorful, phantasmagorical voyage to the moon!  It had prancing moonlings and a gargantuan cannon!  This movie has bandits, steam trains, and horses—the difference does not go unnoticed.  Also the color is gone, again... though to be fair, there is a version which adds a little color-tinting.  Why, 1940s... why must you be so far away?