The Silent Cinema: The Great Train Robbery (1903)

When movies were first invented, they were a novelty. It was a moving picture, and people responded as if one looked at a still photograph and the images started magically moving. So, a train pulling up and people disembarking was a fascinating effect. Narrative cinema's first truly discernible example is the western film "The Great Train Robbery" (1903), which expanded the length, and laid the groundwork for how motion pictures would visually tell stories.

Experiencing a film like "The Great Train Robbery" in the 21st century is no less remarkable than it was over 100 years ago. Director Edwin S. Porter, a former cameraman, created a true movie milestone with his use of cross-cut editing to build tension, and composite editing to tell the story. It was an amazing achievement, and historically its significance cannot be overstated.

The opening scene, when bandits barge into a railroad telegraph office and attack the operator, is remarkable in that it not only presents movement in the foreground, we also see a train pulling up in the background through a window. Porter places the bandits slightly closer to the camera at an angle, expanding upon the mise en scène of the Lumiere brothers and French cinema.

The excitement then builds as the bandits board the train at a stop. Porter gives us an establishing shot of a train worker in the baggage area, with an opening at the left of the frame that shows the velocity of the train's movement. There is a shootout, and the worker's death scene is wonderfully melodramatic (he stretches his arms overhead, twirls, and falls). A fight between a bandit and one of the engineers on the top of the locomotive is fascinating as it edits to replace the actor with a dummy so he can be thrown from the train.

The shot of the bandits at the left of the frame ordering the passengers, at gunpoint, to leave the now stationary car is a brilliant use of visual composition, and action within the frame. A man darts from the crowd, runs toward the camera, and is shot. As the bandits leave with their loot, the many passengers move to the foreground where the man lies, and try to help him. This is all framed so expertly, it is astonishing that such a visual appears in such an early film.

Porter then shows the bandits running through a woodsy area, their figures beginning in the background of the shot and moving closer to the camera so they are more visible. They get on some waiting horses and ride away. Porter then cuts to the tied-up telegraph operator, whose little girl finds him and unties him.

There follows a curious scene in a dance hall where law men are dancing with their women, but it allows for a "break" of sorts before the action picks up, as the telegraph operator bursts into the dance hall and alerts the law about the robbery. The law men ride into the woods, find the bandits, shoot them dead, and recover the train money.

The final shot to end the film is a true classic. Actor Justus D. Barnes, in close-up, faces the camera and shoots at the audience -- a scene that caused people viewing this film in 1903 to scream and duck.

The innovations that occur in this twelve minutes are amazing, even without the hand-tinted color that dresses up a few of the shots. The film has all of the basic rudiments of the action movie, with its constant movement, compelling narrative, buildup of suspense, and concluding violence. And it all happens in 12 minutes. Finally, the fact that "The Great Train Robbery" is a western shows how that genre is most central to the development of the cinematic process.

One of the most fascinating things about film history is its early development, when people with brilliant ideas were inventing cinema's syntax. "The Great Train Robbery" is one of the most important films ever made, and it is great that this movie milestone survives.