The Great Train Robbery is a 1903 American silent Western action film made by Edwin S. Porter for the Edison Manufacturing Company. It follows a gang of outlaws who hold up and rob a steam train at a station in the American West, flee across mountainous terrain, and are finally defeated by a posse of locals. The short film draws on many sources, including a robust existing tradition of Western films, recent European innovations in film technique, the play of the same name by Scott Marble, the popularity of train-themed films, and possibly real-life incidents involving outlaws such as Butch Cassidy.
Porter supervised and photographed the film in New York and New Jersey in November 1903; the Edison studio began selling it to vaudeville houses and other venues in the following month. The cast included Justus D. Barnes and G. M. Anderson, who may have also helped with planning and staging. Porter's storytelling approach, though not particularly innovative or unusual for 1903, allowed him to include many popular techniques of the time, including scenes staged in wide shots, a matte effect, and an attempt to indicate simultaneous action across multiple scenes. Camera pans, location shooting, and moments of violent action helped give The Great Train Robbery a sense of rough-edged immediacy. A special close-up shot, which was unconnected to the story and could either begin or end the film depending on the projectionist's whim, showed Barnes, as the outlaw leader, firing his gun directly into the camera.
Due in part to its popular and accessible subject matter, as well as to its dynamic action and violence, The Great Train Robbery was an unprecedented commercial success. Though it did not significantly influence or advance the Western film genre upon release, it was widely distributed and copied, including in a parody by Porter himself. During the twentieth century, inaccurate legends about The Great Train Robbery developed, claiming it was the first Western or even the first film to include a plot. However, its commercial success and mythical status in film history nonetheless remain undisputed; the film has since become one of the greatest and most influential Westerns of all time, appearing in numerous film and television references and homages. In 1990, The Great Train Robbery was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Plot
Two bandits break into a railroad telegraph office, where they force the operator at gunpoint to stop a train and order its engineer to fill the locomotive's tender at the station's water tank. They then knock the operator out and tie him up. It is boarded by the bandits. Two bandits enter an express car and open a box of valuables with dynamite. The others kill the fireman and force the engineer to halt the train and disconnect its 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. The bandits escape in the locomotive.
The bound operator awakens but collapses again. His daughter arrives and she 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 and chase the bandits through the mountains. The posse finally overtakes the bandits and kills them all and recovers the stolen mail.
A standalone scene titled "Realism" presents a medium close-up of the leader of the outlaws, who fires his pistol point-blank directly into the camera.
Production
Background
In the years leading up to The Great Train Robbery, the film industry was marked by much innovation and variety. Some studios, such as the Edison Manufacturing Company and the Lumière company, were best known for short sketches and actuality films presented in a straightforward style, often only a single shot long. However, other filmmakers aimed for more elaborate productions; Georges Méliès's films, such as the 1902 international success A Trip to the Moon, became acclaimed for their visual storytelling, often encompassing multiple scenes and involving careful editing and complicated special effects. Meanwhile, British filmmakers working in and around Brighton, a group later nicknamed the "Brighton School", made many innovations in narrative film grammar, developing framing and cutting conventions that would become industry standards.
Edwin S. Porter had won acclaim making cameras, film printers, and projectors; however, after his workshop was destroyed by a fire, he accepted a special commission for the Edison Manufacturing Company in 1901. His task to improve Edison's existing projecting equipment was a marked success, and Porter was given a regular job as the cameraman for Edison's New York film studio; at the time being a cameraman meant operating the camera as well as exercising creative control in a way that would later be called film directing. His early films were sketches and actualities in the simple style used by other Edison employees. However, his job also gave him the chance to view the many foreign films the Edison company were distributing and pirating, and around 1901 or 1902 he discovered the more complex works being made by Méliès and the Brighton School. Porter began attempts to bring Edison films to a similar level of achievement, later recalling, "From laboratory examination of some of the popular films of the French pioneer director, George Méliès—trick films like A Trip to the Moon—I came to the conclusion that a picture telling a story might draw the customers back to the theatres, and set to work in this direction."
The Edison studio, facing growing competition from other American companies, welcomed Porter's ambitious plans. His first major attempts at elaborate storytelling films included a 1902 adaptation of Jack and the Beanstalk in imitation of Méliès, and a 1903 Life of an American Fireman in the style of a notable Brighton School film, Fire! His films did well and were influential, bolstered by his status as the leading filmmaker at the most important American studio. In October 1903 Porter joined forces with a new Edison hire, Max Aronson, who was a young stage actor billed as G. M. Anderson. Anderson's initial jobs for the studio were inventing sight gags and playing occasional roles, but he was soon working with Porter on creative collaborations. Porter's next major film was The Great Train Robbery; Porter was in charge of production and photography, while Anderson may have assisted on staging.
Inspirations
Porter (and possibly Anderson) drew on various sources when planning the scenario for The Great Train Robbery. Western themes were already popular in films and other entertainment, reflecting the wide public interest in stories about the past and present of the American West. Many American films before 1900 can be classified as Westerns, such as actuality views of cowboy life, staged Western anecdotes like A Bluff from a Tenderfoot and Cripple Creek Bar-Room Scene (both 1899), and shots of Annie Oakley and of Oglala and Brulé dancers from Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show (both 1894). Studios abroad also began telling Western stories early on, with Mitchell and Kenyon's 1899 British film Kidnapping by Indians the first known example. Edison's 1901 film Stage Coach Hold-up, based on Buffalo Bill's "Hold-up of the Deadwood Stage" act, probably influenced Porter directly. Porter may have also been inspired by recent real events related to the American West: in August 1900, Butch Cassidy and his gang had robbed a Union Pacific Railroad train and escaped capture, and in September 1903, Bill Miner's gang made an unsuccessful holdup of an Oregon Railroad and Navigation Company train.
For the film's title and basic concept, Porter looked to Scott Marble's The Great Train Robbery, a popular stage melodrama that had premiered in Chicago in 1896 and had been revived in New York in 1902. The play covers the adventures of a Texas criminal gang who attempt to steal a $50,000 gold shipment from a Wells Fargo office in Missouri. Their initial scheme is for a mole planted in the company to make off with the gold before it leaves Missouri by train; this plan goes awry, and only leads to an innocent man's arrest. However, using information received at a Texas mountain saloon, the gang are still able to stop the train, blast open the car containing the gold, and bring it back to their secret hideout in a Red River canyon. The United States Marshals Service tracks down the gang and finally defeats them in a climactic fight, with cowboys and Native Americans drawn into the fray.
For the narrative style, Porter likely drew freely on various recent popular films, made by filmmakers experimenting with elaborate storytelling. A Daring Daylight Burglary, a British chase drama from the Sheffield Photo Company, has frequently been cited as particularly influential; it and another British film, Desperate Poaching Affray, were successfully imported to the United States and started a decade-long vogue for films centered on chases. A Daring Daylight Burglarys story and editing appear to have supplied the overall narrative structure for The Great Train Robbery, though in the latter film the chase is only made explicit in one shot, the twelfth. Porter's plot also profited from the booming popularity of railroad-related film attractions, such as phantom rides and standalone comic scenes set on trains. The Great Train Robbery would treat the rail theme more elaborately than was common, showing its train from various angles and involving it in a dramatic adventure.
Filming
Porter filmed The Great Train Robbery in November 1903. Some scenes were photographed at the Edison studio in New York, and others were done in New Jersey, in Essex County Park and along the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad. The stream-crossing scene was filmed at Thistle Mill Ford in the South Mountain Reservation of Essex County Park. The cast included Justus D. Barnes as the leader of the outlaws, Walter Cameron as the sheriff and G. M. Anderson in three small roles (the murdered passenger, the dancing tenderfoot, and one of the robbers). Many Edison workers were among the extras. Edison filmmaker J. Blair Smith was one of the camera operators.
According to rumors in a contemporary New York Times piece on the film, the Edison Company initially attempted to get the railroad company to lend their tracks and cars for free, arguing that it would be good publicity for the line; the railroad directors disagreed, but eventually allowed their resources to be used if Edison also made a more straightforward advertising film for them. The article adds that a real fireman and engineer play those respective parts in the film, and that the filming caused some disturbance when the dummy thrown off the locomotive was mistaken by passersby for a real accident victim.