Post 36- COMPONENT 01 (EXAM 1) FILM HISTORY SECTION A- TASK 1

The Great Train Robbery- Edwin s. Porter 1903

What is the basic plotline?

This short film begins with a man sitting at his desk when two other men enter, here they force the telegraph operator to send a false message to the train so the train will make an unscheduled stop. In the very next scene, the bandits board the train and the robbers enter the mail car, and after a fight, they open the safe. In the next scene, two of the robbers throw the driver and fireman off the train and take it over. Next, the robbers stop the train and hold up the passengers. One runs away and is shot. The robbers escape aboard the engine, and in the subsequent scene we see them mount horses and ride off. Meanwhile, the telegraph operator on the train sends a message calling for assistance. In a saloon, a newcomer is being forced to dance at gunpoint, but when the message arrives, everyone grabs their rifles and exit. Cut to the robbers pursued by a posse. There is a shoot-out, and the robbers are killed. There's one extra shot, showing one of the robbers firing point blank out of the screen. (This was, it seems, sometimes shown at the start of the film, sometimes at the end. It gave the spectator a sense of being directly in the line of fire.)

Who made it and who starred in it?

The short film was directed and written by Edwin S. Porter, as well as being written by Scott Marble. In the late 1890s Porter worked as both a projectionist and mechanic, eventually becoming director and cameraman for the Edison Manufacturing Company. Influenced by both the "Brighton school" and the story films of Georges Méliès, Porter went on to make important shorts such as Life of an American Fireman (1903) and The Great Train Robbery(1903). In them, he helped to develop the modern concept of continuity editing, paving the way for D.W. Griffith who would expand on Porter's discovery that the unit of film structure was the shot rather than the scene. Porter, in an attempt to resist the new industrial system born out of the popularity of nickelodeons, left Edison in 1909 to form his own production company which he eventually sold in 1912.

A.C Abadie played the sherrif, and Frank Hanaway, Adam Charles Hayman, and Justus D. Barnes played the robbers.

How did it utilise the technology available?

The Great Train Robbery not only was the first narrative film, it also introduced several new editing techniques. For example, rather than staying on one set, Porter took his crew to ten different locations, including Edison's New York studio, Essex County Park in New Jersey, and along the Lackawanna railroad. Unlike other film attempts which kept a stable camera position, Porter included a scene in which he panned the camera to follow the characters as they ran across a creek and into the trees to fetch their horses. The most innovative editing technique introduced in The Great Train Robbery was the inclusion of crosscutting. Crosscutting is when the film cuts between two different scenes that are happening at the same time.

How was it received by audiences?  

“The Great Train Robbery” has the honourable distinction of being the first Western movie.  When it was shown a week before Christmas in December 1903, there wasn’t a lot of promotion about the film or any real anticipation from audiences for its showing. 

“The Great Train Robbery” was quietly added to the end of a vaudeville act at the Huber’s Museum in New York.  There was no red carpet; no flashbulbs or blazing marquee. The Great Train Robbery premiered without fanfare between stage acts in a rundown Manhattan vaudeville house.

Initially, the patrons at the theatre were indifferent to the movie, but as it played, they became more interested in watching it.  By the time “The Great Train Robbery” finished, the audience shouted, “Play it again!”   and the theatre did.  They played “The Great Train Robbery” three more times and finally had to turn the lights on to get the audience to leave.  Movie history was made!  The western film was born!

The Great Train Robbery was an immediate sensation. Audiences were gripped by the fast action, realistic depiction of the Old West and Barnes' threatening gunshot. Viewers even flinched when a raging train seemed to be aimed directly at them. 

Movies were struggling out of the penny arcade era at the time. Hundreds of nickelodeons were springing up in converted storefronts and meeting halls across the land, where folks would watch film snippets of prize fights, acrobatics, freak shows and an occasional documentary-style short. But audiences wanted stories. Robbery delivered, becoming the first sure-fire movie attraction and remaining the most successful film for more than a decade until D.W. Griffith's "The Birth of a Nation" was released in 1915.

What is its legacy?

This is the single most influential 12 minutes of cinema in the silent era. Porter managed to take a well-trod dime novel genre, the western, and reinvent it visually. The Great Train Robbery was the freshest, most action-packed movies audiences had ever seen. It cemented the movies as a commercial entertainment industry and signalled the dawn of narrative cinema. To this day, the opening/final shot (it was designed to be either) of a malicious gunman shooting the audience remains one of the most iconic images of American cinema.

Edwin S. Porter’s Legacy

 If Porter’s influence is manifest, why does he feel less important than, oh say, D.W. Griffith? After all, isn’t Porter’s list of firsts the things that we most respect about Griffith’s movies and cite as Griffith’s innovations?

Adolf Zukor said of Porter, “Porter was, I have always felt, more of an artistic mechanic than a dramatic artist. He like to deal with machines better than people. In a way, it was his mechanical imagination which had caused him to improvise the story technique in The Great Train Robbery.”

The “Porter Problem,” in a nutshell, is his complete lack of style. Porter’s genius is chiefly a mechanical one. Like many mechanically talented people, Porter seemed to have delighted in the solving of a problem and revelling in innovation for innovation’s sake. Simultaneous action, check. Next. While Porter broke down the component parts of what we now think of as the very foundation of film making, he never stitched all of those component parts into one glorious whole. That was D.W. Griffith’s bailiwick.

Porter was working at time when substance stood in for style. No one gave a wet slap about who the director was. Hell, no one cared who the star was. While the novelty of the moving picture eventually wore away, it took a while. But upping the ante with his innovative narrative techniques, Porter basically started building the coffin his film making career would be buried in.

Porter eventually transitioned out of movie making and into moving equipment making. From 1917 to 1925 he served as president of the Precision Machine Company, manufacturers of the Simplex projectors. He retired in 1925 and continued to tinker on his own as an inventor and designer, securing several patents for still cameras and projector devices.

Edwin S. Porter might not be sexiest figure in cinematic history, but cinema owes him an enormous debt. So, give Porter a little salute and a birthday tribute (if you include booze, it’s more fun).