USA
3.5*
Director:
Edwin S. Porter
Screenwriters:
Edwin S. Porter
Scott Marble
Directors of Photography:
Blair Smith
Edwin S. Porter
Running time: 12 minutes
Edwin S. Porter’s 1903 film, produced in the first decade of the motion picture industry, was not the first film to present the viewer with a narrative, but it must have been one of the most exhilarating films of its time, with action scenes that would clearly serve as the blueprint for similar scenes in tens of thousands of subsequent films. As a 12-minute film, The Great Train Robbery moves along briskly to show us the beginning, the middle, and the end of the train heist, focusing almost completely on the action while being indifferent to its perpetrators (the film is much more interested in the victims).
The film consists of a mere sequence of 14 shots, but unlike many contemporary films that have a similar average shot length (in this case, around 50 seconds), no shot feels too long, for the pace is quick throughout as we rush from one action to the next. The actions, as the title makes clear, all revolve around a train robbery and involve gunfights in the forest, fistfights on top of a moving train and chases on horseback. The shots are mostly static, but the action inside the frame will keep your attention.
As I mentioned above, the filmmaker focuses our attention on the very human individuals caught up in the action – for example, the telegraph operator at the train station, who is tied up, unable to alert the authorities of the bandits’ plans to rob the train, or the passenger shot in the back when he tries to escape. In the last instance, the passengers all have to line up to empty their pockets and give up their jewellery, when one man tries to run away. He is shot, but the bandits proceed to rifle through all the other passengers’ belongings; when they finally leave, the camera stays with this passenger, who has been lying motionlessly in the foreground.
Meanwhile, we never learn who the bandits or what their motives for this robbery are. It was not the film’s intention to educate its viewers but rather to entertain them, and it certainly succeeds in doing that, even though its rudimentary editing might seem laughable to a viewer today: in one scene, there is a very visible cut before a man is thrown off the train – what was a very lively individual before the cut suddenly turns into a lifeless dummy after the cut…
The most famous shot in the film is completely gratuitous and contains a close-up of a bandit who looks directly into the camera, points his pistol at us, and fires six shots. The shot comes after the narrative proper, as a kind of epilogue, or coda, and is clearly used for effect rather than serving as a continuation of the narrative. All the bandits having been killed by the end of the film, one could argue that the breaking of the fourth wall is warranted and so is the use of the close-up, which the director had avoided in the rest of the film.
The Great Train Robbery does not outstay its welcome; it is undoubtedly an important historical document that presents us with the origins of the action film, but while one can forgive the film for its technical shortcomings, the narrative still feels too rough around the edges and I would have appreciated a better sense of context and characters. However, as one of the first narrative films, it is remarkably coherent and worth a look, just to see where it all started.