"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)