The Great Train Robbery (1903)

Hand coloured. The way Edwin S. Porter wanted it, apparently.

Over the last few days I've been having a bit of a D.W. Griffith marathon but after watching the spectacular The Birth of a Nation over the last couple of days I could do with something a bit more light-hearted before I get round to reviewing that controversial title. So I went back to my cinema mapbook, 1001 Films You Must See Before You Die, for another classic early silent. As I covered A Trip To The Moon last time, it seems logical to look at the book's next-oldest film, Edwin S. Porter's The Great Train Robbery.

The Great Train Robbery has been praised as a film which introduced a number of new techniques which are now used in practically every production. A good example of this is cross-cutting, where the camera cuts to show two different locations, both with action occurring, but shown to be happening at the same time. Though it's notable here for its introduction, it would still be another 12 years before it was really successfully implemented in The Birth of a Nation. Perhaps more importantly is that this was one of the first films to have a proper narrative, as opposed to some of the looser productions that had preceded it. I'm not a fan of Westerns at all, but watching this I found it fascinating to think that this was made only a few years after the American Frontier had broken up in 1890, marking the decline of the Old West.

The narrative seems simple to a modern audience, but I can imagine the excitement American audiences in 1903 must have felt watching this, with all of its action shots, including a great shooting scene and a bit of a hootenanny with some colourful ladies! There's a great little battle sequence towards the end of the film when the robbers, hiding in the woods, are ambushed and a gunfight ensues. I was surprised how much of the film was hand coloured, notably the puffs of smoke coming from the pistols are coloured orange, as well as the women's clothes at the party and a girl in a red cloak earlier in the film. I can deal with the smoke, but the clothes seemed a bit jarring. First I thought it was a dodgy, funky, remix I was watching but no, this is apparently the way Porter wanted it.

Porter also saves the best shot for last (though apparently it could have been played either at the start or the end of the film), when actor George Barnes shoots his pistol off toward the audience. To have such an iconic shot (literally) certainly raises The Great Train Robbery's impact, but for me, ignore the final 10 seconds and you're left with a fairly average silent film.