Silent movies - The Great Train Robbery

Today I have another short for you. When I started this project, I found a list of recommended silent films. This one was on it and we didn't have a Western yet.
So let's enter the world of the Western movie with "The Great Train Robbery". Kind of, but I'll get to that.

In the early 1900s when movies were still a novelty and mostly had been short glimpses into ordinary life - who could forget the train entering the station or workers leaving a factory, gripping stuff! (I'm not making fun of it, at the time it really was) - a movie 12 minutes long (although the versions on YouTube have different lengths, maybe a matter of speed?) and with a plot was really pretty incredible.

First comes the plot (with spoilers).
The title is a bit of a giveaway.
Two masked men enter a railroad telegraph office and force the operator to stop the train and to order the engineer to take water at this station before knocking him out and tying him up.
The band is hiding behind the water tank and then sneaks onto the train. Two of the bandits enter the express car where the messenger checks the mail. He gets killed and the robbers open the locked treasure box with dynamite.
Meanwhile, the other bandits head to the locomotive. In a fight on the tender, the fireman gets killed and thrown off the train. The engineer is forced to disconnect the locomotive.
The bandits make the passengers leave the coaches and take their valuables. One passenger who tries to escape is shot.
Afterwards, the band escapes in the locomotive. After a few miles they leave the train and go for their horses they had tied to some trees nearby.
The scene cuts back to the telegraph office where the operator is trying to telegraph for help before fainting again. His daughter enters, cuts the ropes, and wakes him up throwing some water at his face.
Next we see people dancing in a dance hall when the operator comes in to tell what has happened. The men get their guns and pursue the bandits.
When they find them, one of the bandits is shot, the other three escape. Feeling safe, they go through the mail bags, but the posse sneak up on them without horses. A fight takes place which costs the lives of the bandits and some of the posse.
The leader of the outlaws takes aim and fires point blank at the audience.

You think I added the picture a second time by mistake? No.
From the Edison Film Catalogue 1904:
"This section of the scene can be used either to
begin the subject or to end it, as the operator may choose."
I don't know how scared some of the viewers might have
been, but I believe it was a cool effect.

For a 12 minute short, this sure has quite the death toll (I think not even Midsomer Murders could keep up with that).
Now why did I say that this is "kind of" a Western?
To us it looks like one, we have horses, cowboys, the setting is right. To people back then, this could well be their ordinary surroundings, though, and the film could have been taken right out of the paper.
Train robberies "emerged shortly after the Civil War" and "became obsolete by the 1930s". The death toll among both robbers and passengers could be high especially if crew or passengers resisted, but if it worked out, the loot could be worth the try. As early robberies still often went unpunished and valuables were transported by train now rather than by stage coach, the idea of a crime you didn't need specialized skills for became quite popular in the USA.
The "Wild West" had also been shown on film before, for example footage of Annie Oakley or Buffalo Bill, but never with a plot, so you could say this kicked off the fascination with Western movies.

I also read that this was the first movie with a narrative and one blogger actually explained why for them it had more narrative than Méliès's Trip to the Moon, but I couldn't agree. Then I found a quote from a TCM article. The link didn't work anymore, but the quote says the movie "became the first influential narrative film in which the editing was imaginative and contributed to the narrative".
I could live with that.

The film used cross-cutting, that means cutting between two scenes happening simultaneously, in this case between the bandits and the posse.
While there were sets which looked like a stage, a lot of the plot takes place outside which gives the movie a more real look, and again, the plot was something people could relate to, either because they lived there or through newspaper articles.
It is a little funny to see the "clock" on the wall here, but at the same time you see a train pass by the big window. Here it's a matte shot that gives the scene reality.

Or take this scene. You don't only have the "special effect" of the explosion, but in the back you also see through the open wagon door that the train is speeding by some trees, also a matte shot.

The movie was a huge success. Imagine what it must felt like to the audience.
It was fast-paced, it showed violence and justice, and there was even a bit of comic relief when a man comes into the dance hall and the men shoot as his feet to make him dance (talk cowboy stereotype, but it seems to have actually happened). It's short, it has nothing to do with the rest of the movie, but we have scenes like that even today sometimes. Anything to entertain the audience.

To us, some of it seems funny today, such as the obvious dummy the bandit is throwing off the train. I didn't even mind the wire on the bat in Dracula almost 30 years later, though. Who knows, had it been a Keaton movie, they might have thrown a stuntman off.
I was impressed by the sheer amount of passengers leaving the train. I admit it made me think of a clown car for a bit, but then memories of my commute came to me and suddenly the number of passengers seemed totally normal to me.
And the theatrical acting? Loved it. If you can't scream when you're dying, you should at least be allowed to die dramatically. The more silent movies I watch, the more I'm making my peace with wringing hands and rolling eyes.

Believe it or not, this actor - Gilbert M. Anderson - is also one of the bandits
and the dancing tenderfoot in the dance hall scene,
he later became a real Western star as "Broncho Billy".

If you like Western movies, you should give this one a chance.
There are also versions in which some of the dresses or effects are hand painted, but the one I watched isn't, so I can't tell you if that enhances the experience.

This film also inspired another one by the same director, Edwin S. Porter, by the way.
You can watch "The Little Train Robbery" from 1905, which shows a gang of kids rob a miniature train for the loot of candy, here. I loved the ending. Not everyone was so happy with this short, though, because they thought it would make children become criminals!


Selected sources:

1. Fritzi Kramer: The Great Train Robbery (1903) A Silent Film Review. On: Movies Silently, November 3, 2013
2. Jeff Arnold: The Great Train Robbery (Edison, 1903). On: Jeff Arnold's West, March 8, 2021
3. Chris Scott Edwards: The Great Train Robbery (1903). On: Silent Volume, July 12, 2009
4. The Fascinating Story of 1903's Biggest Movie. On the YouTube channel "Toni's Film Club"
5. Rick Ruddell and Scott Decker: Train Robbery: A Retrospective Look at an Obsolete Crime. In: Criminal Justice Review, 42(2017),4, pp. 333 - 348 (closed access)