"The Great Train Robbery" (1903)

I'm going to be in Catalina (off the California coast) for the next two days, so I won't be able to post (or find any films, for that matter), but I wanted to get this one out before I leave.  I've seen it before, in a media history class, but wanted to find it and refresh my memory before posting.  

From The Book:  "What is exceptional about Edwin S. Porter's film is the degree of narrative sophistication, given the early date.  There are over a dozen separate scenes, each further developing the story.  In the opening scene two masked robbers force a telegraph operator to send a false message so that the train will make an unscheduled stop.  In the next scene bandits board the train.  The robbers enter the mail car, and after a fight, open the safe.  In the next scene two robbers overpower the driver and fireman of the train and throw one of them off.  Next the robbers stop the train and hold up the passengers.  One runs away and is shot.  Then the robbers escape aboard the engine, and in the subsequent scene we wee them mount horses and ride off.  Meanwhile the telegraph operator on the train sends a message calling for assistance.  In a saloon a newcomer is being forced to dance at gunpoint, but when the message arrives everyone grabs their rifles and exits.  Cut to the robbers pursued by a posse.  There is a shoot-out, and the robbers are killed. 
There's one extra shot, the best known in the film, showing one of the robbers firing point blank out of the screen.  This was, it seems, sometimes shown at the start of the film, sometimes at the end.  Either way, it gave the spectator a sense of being directly in the line of fire."

Every Western fan should see this at least once.  Though some claim that it's not truely a Western, because of its shooting location (Delaware and New Jersey), or because it takes its roots from non-Westerns, but there is an undeniable connection between train robberies and Western lore.  I very much enjoyed it; for some reason I find it so much easier to suspend disbelief when watching these older films.  Yes, I did chuckle when characters were shot "dead" and still moved a limb through the rest of the scene, also when the man was thrown off the train and it was painfully obvious that it was a rag doll, but it didn't distract me from the story the way that modern film tricks do.  Though none of the innovative techniques (such as cross-cuts, camera movement, and on-location shooting) used for this film were original to it, but it was a significant step forward in movie making.  It was one of the first films of significant length to be fully narrative. 
From Edison Films Catalogue, No. 200, Jan. 1904: "This sensational and highly tragic subject will certainly make a decided `hit' whenever shown. In every respect we consider it absolutely the superior of any moving picture ever made. It has been posed and acted in faithful duplication of the genuine `Hold Ups' made famous by various outlaw bands in the far West, and only recently the East has been shocked by several crimes of the frontier order, which fact will increase the popular interest in this great Headline Attraction."

I had a bit of a harder time finding this one; A Trip to the Moon had a link right on its IMDb page to a site where I could stream it, this one didn't.  I had to do a Google search, and wound up finding it on YouTube.  I highly recommend watching it by clicking here.

Anyway, like I said, I'll be out of town for New Year's Eve and the day after, so I won't be able to get another blog out until Sunday at the earliest (though I won't promise one until the middle of next week, Wednesday at the latest).

Next movie:  The Birth of a Nation (1915)

Le Voyage Dans La Lune, or A Trip to the Moon

From "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die" (henceforth to be referred to as The Book): "A Trip to the Moon directly reflects the histrionic personality of its director, Georges Melies, whose past as a theater actor and magician influences the making of the movie.  The film boldly experiments with some of the most famous cinematic techniques, such as superimpositions, dissolves, and editing practices that would be widely used later on.  Despite the simplicity of its special effects, the film is generally considered the first example of science-fiction cinema.  It offers many elements characteristic of the genre-a spaceship, the discovery of a new frontier-and establishes most of its conventions."

As an avid fan of sci-fi, it really was a treat to watch the movie that pretty much paved the way for the genre.  I haven't seen many films of this era, but I know that for the time period it was pretty damn long.  Most "movies" of the time were topping out at about 2 minutes, because the process was so expensive and time consuming, but this one runs just under 12 minutes.  It has a great storyline; a group of astronomers meet and decide to take a trip to the moon, and while there they encounter the moon's hostile inhabitants, Selians, who capture them and take them to their king.  The astronomers find that they can destroy the Selians by hitting them with their umbrellas, and escape thusly.  After climbing back into their shuttle, they plummet back down to Earth, sink to the bottom of the ocean, and because of the air inside the shuttle float back to the top, and are then rescued by a boat and brought back to Paris.  I expected the roughness of the film to be distracting, but surprisingly, it wasn't.  There were only a couple of shots where someone jumped from one side of the room to the other where a couple of frames were taken out, and the dissolves from one scene to another made scene openings a little difficult to see, but overall, for the time period it's a rather impressive piece.

If you'd like to watch it, it can be seen here.

Next movie:  The Great Train Robbery.

My Cinematic Odyssey

This year I received "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die: 5th Anniversary Edition" as a Christmas gift from my awesome husband, and in looking through it I realized that there are a ton of amazing movies that I haven't seen.  Though, I didn't really need a book to tell me that...I've had a lot of the ones listed in this book on my To-See list for a long time.  So, taking inspiration from Julie Powell, I've decided to go on a cinematic quest to see as many movies from this sizeable list as I can.  I don't know that I'll be able to find all of them, especially the older, more rare ones, but in the era of Google I'm sure I'll be able to find quite a few.  I'm not going to put a time limit on this, because I have a pretty busy life, but I'll try to get reviews and opinions up as often as possible.

So the first film in my quest is a very early French film from 1902 called "Le Voyage Dans La Lune", or "A Trip To The Moon".  Don't know how easy it'll be to find, but I'll do my best!