About The Great Train Robbery (1903)
The story behind the film
The Great Train Robbery was made by Edwin S. Porter for Thomas Edison's film company in November 1903, shot in the Edison studio in New York and on location in New Jersey. In about twelve minutes it tells a complete crime story: bandits overpower a telegraph operator, rob a train's mail car and passengers, escape on horseback, and are tracked down and killed by a posse in a final shoot-out.
Porter drew on several popular sources, including a stage melodrama of the same name, the public appetite for train films and Western stories, and news of real train robberies by gangs like Butch Cassidy's. The film was an enormous commercial success, sold to vaudeville houses and other venues across the country.
Cast & crew
- Directed, photographed and edited by Edwin S. Porter for the Edison Manufacturing Company
- Justus D. Barnes as the bandit leader (the man who fires at the audience)
- G. M. Anderson in several roles, including a bandit and a passenger who is shot
- Cast and crew of Edison's New York studio
Why it's worth watching
The Great Train Robbery is often described — inaccurately — as the first Western or the first film with a story. It was neither. But it's one of the most important early American films because it shows how quickly movies were learning to tell a story through editing. Porter cuts between different locations, and at one point suggests that events are happening at the same time — the robbers fleeing while the telegraph operator is found and the posse gathers. He also uses a matte effect to show a moving landscape through the express car door, and pans the camera to follow the action outdoors.
The film is also simply exciting: there's a fight on top of a moving locomotive, a passenger shot while trying to run, and a mounted chase through the woods. For 1903 audiences it was thrilling and violent.
Fun facts
- The film's most famous shot is a close-up of Justus D. Barnes firing his pistol straight at the camera. It wasn't connected to the story, and exhibitors could choose to show it at the beginning or the end.
- G. M. Anderson later became "Broncho Billy" Anderson, one of the first Western movie stars, and co-founded the Essanay film company.
- Some prints were hand-coloured, frame by frame, to tint gunfire smoke and clothing.
- The Library of Congress selected it for the National Film Registry in 1990.
Public-domain status
The Great Train Robbery was published in 1903; its US copyright has long expired, and it is in the public domain in the United States. See "Rights & source" below for the copy and music we broadcast.