"The Great Train Robbery" Of 1903 By Thomas Edison Motion Picture Company

In 1903, an employee of This motion picture by Thomas Edison's Motion Picture Company was produced by an employee in 1903 and was named "The Great TrainRobbery."

Simply told, it was about a group of western criminals robbing a train. They were killed in a gunfight with a group of police. At the time this was a very popular, in fact extremely popular and it was this film that actually started what is now a huge motion picture industry.

This version was remastered in 2010 and has been tinted. Also before, there was no soundtrack which has been added at the same time as the remastering was done.

The Directing and Photography was done by a former Thomas Edison Cameraman named Edwin S. Porter.

Originally it as a very primitive one reel action motion picture of only 10 minutes duration. It had just 14 scenes and was filmed in November of 1903. It was filmed on the East Coast, not in Wyoming as it seems, it was made in various locales in Essex County Park in New Jersey and at Edison's New York and also along the Lackawanna railroad.

The Film was based on an 1896 story by Scott Marble and was named after a popular contemporary stage melodrama of the time.

It was brought out during pre-nickelodeon era, and was the most popular and commercially successful film of its time and established the notion in the entertainment industry that film making could and did become a very viable commercial medium.

Originally this film was advertised as "a faithful duplication of the genuine 'Hold Ups' made famous by various outlaw bands in the far West." And it was inspired by the train robbery carried out by the now infamous George Leroy Parker's (Butch Cassidy) "Hole in the Wall" gang at Table Rock, Wyoming. The gang halted the No 3 train on the Union Pacific Railroad tracks.

The conductor was forced to uncouple the passenger cars. After which the gang blew the safe in the mail car. They escaped with about $5000 booty.1.

There were a number of new and innovative techniques used during the making of this film, including location shooting; cross and jump cuts were new there was minor camera placement and parallel editing. There was some very sophisticated editing such as, showing two separate lines of action and events happening at the same time.

The film is inter-cut from the bandits beating up the telegraph operator (scene one) to the operator's daughter discovering her father (scene ten), to the operator's recruitment of a dance hall posse (scene eleven), to the bandits being pursued (scene twelve), and splitting up the booty and having a final shoot-out (scene thirteen).

The film also employed the first pan shots (in scenes eight and nine), and the use of an ellipsis (in scene eleven). Rather than follow the telegraph operator to the dance, the film cut directly to the dance where the telegraph operator enters. It was also the first film in which gunshots forced someone to dance (in scene eleven) - an oft-repeated, clichéd action in many westerns. And the spectacle of the fireman (replaced by a dummy with a jump cut in scene four) being thrown off the moving train was a first in screen history.

In the film's fourteen scenes, a narrative story with multiple plot lines was told - with elements that were copied repeatedly afterwards by future westerns - of a train hold-up with six-shooters, a daring robbery accompanied by violence and death, a hastily-assembled posse's chase on horseback after the fleeing bandits, and the apprehension of the desperadoes after a showdown in the woods. The steam locomotive always provided a point of reference from different filming perspectives. The first cowboy star, Gilbert M. 'Broncho Billy' Anderson played several roles: a bandit, a wounded passenger, and a tenderfoot dancer.

The music-track has been added because as silent movie is really was so silent, it was hard to watch. The movie is over 100 years old.

Director: Edwin S. Porter
Producer: Thomas Edison
Production Company: Thomas Edison
Audio/Visual: music-track added later, black & white
Language: only music-track

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• directed and photographed
• Edwin S. Porter
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• butch cassidy
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