The Great Train Robbery (1903 film)

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The Great Train Robbery is a 1903 American silent short

Western film written, produced, and directed by Edwin S. The Great Train Robbery
Porter, a former Edison Studios cameraman. Actors in the
movie included Alfred C. Abadie, Broncho Billy Anderson and
Justus D. Barnes, although there were no credits. Though a
Western, it was filmed in Milltown, New Jersey. The film was
inspired by Scott Marble's 1896 stage play.[2]

At twelve minutes long, The Great Train Robbery film is

considered a milestone in film making, expanding on Porter's
previous work Life of an American Fireman. 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 The bandits coming under fire while attempting to
of cross cutting, in which two scenes are shown to be occurring escape with the loot.
simultaneously but in different locations. Some prints were also Directed by Edwin S. Porter
hand colored in certain scenes. Techniques used in The Great
Produced by Edwin S. Porter
Train Robbery were inspired by those used in Frank
Mottershaw's British film A Daring Daylight Burglary, Written by Edwin S. Porter
released earlier in the year.[3] Film historians now largely Scott Marble
consider The Great Train Robbery to be the first American Starring Alfred C. Abadie
action film and the first Western film with a "recognizable Broncho Billy Anderson
Justus D. Barnes
form".[4][5]
Walter Cameron
In 1990, The Great Train Robbery was selected for Cinematography Edwin S. Porter
preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Blair Smith
Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or Edited by Edwin S. Porter
aesthetically significant".
Distributed by Warner Bros. (as. Edison
Manufacturing Company)
Kleine Optical Company
Contents Release date December 1, 1903
Running time 12 minutes (at 18 frame/s)
1 Plot
Country United States
2 Final shot
3 Production notes Language Silent
4 Cast English intertitles
5 Release and reception Budget $150[1]
6 In popular culture
7 See also
8 References
9 External links

Plot
 The film opens with two bandits breaking into a railroad telegraph office,
where they force the operator at gunpoint to have a train stopped and to
transmit orders for the engineer to fill the locomotive's tender at the
station's water tank. They then knock the operator out and tie him up. As
the train stops it is boarded by the banditsnow four. Two bandits enter an
express car, kill a messenger and open a box of valuables with dynamite;
the others kill the fireman and force the engineer to halt the train and
disconnect the locomotive. The bandits then force the passengers off the
train and rifle them for their belongings. One passenger tries to escape but
is instantly shot down. Carrying their loot, the bandits escape in the
The Great Train Robbery (1903), the
locomotive, later stopping in a valley where their horses had been left.
first Western film.
Meanwhile, back in the telegraph office, the bound operator awakens, but
he collapses again. His daughter arrives bringing him his meal and cuts him free, and restores him to consciousness
by dousing him with water.

There is some comic relief at a dance hall, where an Eastern stranger is forced to dance while the locals fire at his
feet. The door suddenly opens and the telegraph operator rushes in to tell them of the robbery. The men quickly
form a posse, which overtakes the bandits, and in a final shootout kills them all and recovers the stolen mail.

Final shot
An additional scene of the film is a close-up of the leader of the bandits, played
by Justus D. Barnes, who empties his pistol point-blank into the camera.
Although it is usually placed at the end, Porter stated that the scene could also
appear at the beginning of the film.

In the 1990 film Goodfellas, the final shot of Tommy shooting at the camera was
based on the shot from this film.

Production notes Justus D. Barnes as the leader

of the outlaw band, taking aim
Porter's film was shot at the Edison studios in New York City, on location in New and firing point blank at the
Jersey at the South Mountain Reservation, part of the modern Essex County Park audience, shocking many first-
system, as well as along the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Railroad. time moviegoers with the
Filmed during November 1903, the picture was advertised as available for sale to extreme realism of the final
distributors in December of that same year.[6] shot.

Cast
Alfred C. Abadie as Sheriff Adam Charles Hayman as Bandit
Broncho Billy Anderson as Bandit / Shot John Manus Dougherty, Sr. as Fourth bandit
Passenger / Tenderfoot Dancer Marie Murray as Dance-hall dancer
Justus D. Barnes as Bandit Who Fires At Camera Mary Snow as Little girl
Walter Cameron as Sheriff George Barnes (uncredited)[7]
Donald Gallaher as Little boy Morgan Jones (uncredited)
Frank Hanaway as Bandit

Adam Charles Hayman as Bandit

Release and reception
The Great Train Robbery had its official debut at Huber's Museum in New York City before being exhibited at
eleven theaters elsewhere in the city.[8] In advertising for the film, Edison agents touted the film as "...absolutely
the superior of any moving picture ever made"[9] as well as a "...faithful imitation of the genuine 'Hold Ups' made
famous by various outlaw bands in the far West..."[9]

The film's budget was an estimated $150.[1] Upon its release, The Great Train Robbery became a massive success
and is considered one of the first Western films.[10] It is also considered one of the first blockbusters and was one
of the most popular films of the silent era until the release of The Birth of a Nation in 1915.[10]

In popular culture
The success of The Great Train Robbery inspired several similar films including: The Bold Bank Robbery
(1904) and The Hold-Up Of The Rocky Mountain Express (1906), and another Edwin S. Porter film The Life
of an American Cowboy (1906).[11]
Edwin S. Porter also made a parody of The Great Train Robbery titled The Little Train Robbery (1905), with
an all-child cast in which a larger gang of bandits holds up a mini train and steal their dolls and candy.[12]
In the 1966 Batman TV Series episode entitled "The Riddler's False Notion", silent film star Francis X.
Bushman guest stars as the wealthy film collector who owns a print of The Great Train Robbery.[13]
In the last episode of season three of Breaking Bad, the closing scene is of Jesse Pinkman pointing his gun at
the camera and firing into it as a homage of the ending to the film.
According to media historian James Chapman, the gun barrel sequence featured in the James Bond films are
similar to the scene featuring of Justus D. Barnes firing at the camera. The sequence was created by Maurice
Binder.[14]
The final scene of Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas, in which the character Tommy shoots at the camera,
recreates this film's final scene as a homage.
In the Netflix series Bojack Horseman, Princess Carolyn has a number of conversations with Lenny
Turteltaub, an old-timer in show business. As such, he regularly inserts references to meetings he had with
other famous stars and filmmakers from cinema's early days, including Buster Keaton and Lionel
Barrymore. During one conversation, he states: "As I said to Ed Porter at the premier of 'The Great Train
Robbery,' 'Aggh! The train's coming right at me!'" The reference is being confused, however, with L'Arrive
d'un train en gare de La Ciotat by the Lumire Brothers. The confusion comes from the fact that both The
Great Train Robbery and L'Arrive d'un train en gare de La Ciotat have elements that appear to be moving
toward the audience (not to mention those early film audiences, according to legend, are [dubiously]
purported to have ducked at these elements). However, it is in L'Arrive d'un train en gare de La Ciotat that
this element is a train; in The Great Train Robbery said element is the pistol being pointed at the audience
and fired during the iconic final shot of the film.
The movie Tombstone uses the shot into the camera cut during its prolog.
The film's iconic final scene with Justus D. Barnes was used for the title and finishing sequences of a
German 1978-1986 TV show named Western von Gestern (lit. "Yesterday's Western", by the ZDF).[15]

See also
List of films with a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, a film review aggregator website

References
1. Souter, Gerry (2012). American Shooter: A Personal History of Gun Culture in the United States. Potomac Books, Inc.
p. 254. ISBN 1-597-97690-3.
 2. p.39 Mayer, David Stagestruck Filmmaker: D. W. Griffith and the American Theatre University of Iowa Press 1 Mar
2009
3. Jess-Cooke, Carolyn (2009). Film Sequels: Theory and Practice from Hollywood to Bollywood. Oxford University Press.
p. 1939. ISBN 0-748-68947-8.
4. Keim, Norman O. (2008). Our Movie Houses: A History of Film & Cinematic Innovation in Central New York. Syracuse
University Press. p. 17. ISBN 0-815-60896-9.
5. Moses, L. G. (1999). Wild West Shows and the Images of American Indians, 1883-1933. UNM Press. p. 225. ISBN 0-
826-32089-9.
6. Musser, Charles (2004). "5". In Grieveson, Lee; Krmer, Peter. The Silent Cinema Reader. London: Routledge. p. 89.
ISBN 0-415-25283-0.
7. Bowers, Q. David (1995). "Volume 3: Biographies - Barnes, George" (http://www.thanhouser.org/tcocd/Biography_File
s/con3gdfex.htm). Thanhouser.org. Retrieved February 26, 2015.
8. (Musser 2004, p. 90)
9. Smith, Michael Glover; Selzer, Adam (2015). Flickering Empire: How Chicago Invented the U.S. Film Industry.
Columbia University Press. p. 71. ISBN 0-231-85079-4.
10. Winter, Jessica; Hughes, Lloyd (2007). The Rough Guide to Film. Penguin. p. 429. ISBN 1-405-38498-0.
11. Lusted, David (2014). The Western. Routledge. p. 78. ISBN 1-317-87491-9.
12. "Overview of Edison Motion Pictures by Genre - Drama & Adventure" (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/edhtml/edmpfr.h
tml#DR). Retrieved 2012-10-11.
13. Eisner, Joel; Krinsky, David (1984). Television Comedy Series: An Episode Guide To 153 TV Sitcoms In Syndication.
McFarland. p. 93. ISBN 0-899-50088-9.
14. Chapman, James (2000). Licence to Thrill: A Cultural History of the James Bond Films. Columbia University Press.
p. 61. ISBN 0-231-12048-6.
15. Western von Gestern website (http://www.western-von-gestern.de/western-von-gestern.htm) (German)

External links
The Great Train Robbery (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxqg2
Wikimedia Commons has
1tfqCg) on YouTube
media related to The Great
Download from the Library of Congress (http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-b Train Robbery.
in/query/r?ammem/papr:@filreq(@field(NUMBER+@band(edmp+2
443s3))+@field(COLLID+edison))) (in MPEG-1, RealVideo or QuickTime format)
The Great Train Robbery (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0000439/) on IMDb
The short film The Great Train Robbery (https://archive.org/details/TheGreatTrainRobbery_555) is
available for free download at the Internet Archive
The Great Train Robbery (http://tcmdb.com/title/title.jsp?stid=327276) at the TCM Movie Database
The Great Train Robbery (http://www.allmovie.com/movie/v149782) at AllMovie
Great Films: The Great Train Robbery (http://www.filmsite.org/grea.html)

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Categories: 1903 films 1900s action films 1900s Western (genre) films American action films
American films American heist films American silent short films American Western (genre) films
American black-and-white films Films about hijackings Films based on plays
Films directed by Edwin S. Porter Films set in the 1850s Films shot in New Jersey Rail transport films
Thomas Edison United States National Film Registry films Edison Manufacturing Company films

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