NipPierce Wow, this is a REALLY bad movie!

ThrillMessage There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Freeman This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

des-47 Though by no means the first with a Western setting, this film was a breakthrough for the genre and, with a plot involving black-clad trigger happy bandits holding up a train then receiving rough justice at the hands of a posse following a horseback chase, helped established several elements of its iconography. Like so much else that was later to seem newly minted for the cinema, these images had precedents in other media, including popular fiction, graphic art and touring stage spectacles known as Wild West Shows which presented a romanticised, gun-totin' version of the American West in the late Victorian period. But location filming provided the opportunity to present these elements in a new setting of realistic visual grandeur and scale – even if, as here, New Jersey stood in for the West.Like various other longer narrative films in these early days, The Great Train Robbery tells its story largely by stringing together a succession of tableaux, with studio and location scenes staged alike in long shot. At around 12 minutes, with 14 shots, it builds in length, ambition and achievement on Edison director Edwin S Porter's Life of an American Fireman, released a few months earlier, though in some respects is less visually imaginative. A lengthy scene where the villains force passengers off the train and rob them shows the limitations of the technique: the shot is perfectly set up for the dramatic death of a would-be escapee who runs towards the camera before being killed, and later after the bandits depart and the crowd swarms round the corpse, but otherwise it's difficult to see what's going on.Elsewhere Porter makes good use of the opportunities for movement and energy. He shoots from the back of a moving locomotive across the top of the cab to the track ahead as the villains stalk towards the crew. And a contemporary director would likely choose a similar camera position for the shot where the mounted bandits are chased through the woods by the posse, exchanging gunfire as they go. Notably, there are two early examples of camera movement, put to very good use when the villains leave the hijacked loco. The camera pans and tilts with the characters, setting up the expectation that there's something of interest just off frame, which is then revealed as a group of waiting horses on which they make their final escape.But the film is best known for a shot completely tangential to the narrative, in which actor Justus D Barnes, as the leader of the gang, expressionlessly points his revolver at the camera and fires six shots at point blank range. The shot is usually placed at the end of the film, after the character has been killed on screen, but Porter suggested it could also be re-edited as the opening shot if distributors preferred. It's a striking image of violence directed at the audience, but there are now no reports of screaming and ducking as with the Lumières' train.Far from being 'realistic', the shot, and the film as a whole, exemplify the growing tendency of cinema to exploit the vicarious thrill of danger and violence in a contained, safe space. The image is cinema's second enduring icon after Méliès' moon, and has been much parodied and homaged, most notably in Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas, with Joe Pesci's psychotic gangster standing in for Barnes' outlaw. But in the later film it's actually the penultimate shot. It's followed by a view of the narrator, Ray Liotta's police informer, smiling smugly at the camera before retreating into the comfortable suburban home he occupies under his new identity, safe in the knowledge that the bad guys and their guns are now illusions, locked in their cel(l) of film.

ironhorse_iv This film is like wine. The older it gets, the better the nostalgia. Why would anyone dislike this movie? Of course, to our generation, it's basically dated, but back then it was such a leap forward in film-making. There wasn't that much movies as there is now. It's hard to judge a movie based on a modern understanding of it; after all movies over a century of cinema having touched almost every subject imaginable. I've always wondered what the people who made all these original films would think of the films today, with all the technological advancements. It really is quite amazing to see material like this film still being watch today. To truly analysis a film like this, one must look back at the time, in which it was shot and find the real truths. Myth number one: it's the first movie ever made. The Great Train Robbery is not the 1st. Asking what was the first movie ever made is a bit like asking which came first, the chicken or the egg. It's hard to give a definitive reply. If you consider Edison's Kinetoscope shorts to be movies, the first movies were from 1893, not 1903. Some historian claim that the first ever video footage was 1893's New York Fire Brigade footage. There might a film that earlier than that. The earliest celluloid film was shot by Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince using the Le Prince single-lens camera made in 1888 call "Roundhay Garden Scene". The short films of the 1870s Praxinoscope were and they were seen mostly as acts in vaudeville programs. The film back then, could be under a minute long and would usually present a single scene, authentic or staged, of everyday life, a public event, a sporting event or slapstick. There was little to no cinematic technique, usually no camera movement, and flat compositions reminiscent of the stage. It wasn't until 1890 that film had more of a story. The narrative cinema started with 1895 L'arroseur arose, follow by 1902 'A Trip to the Moon' and 1903's 'Life of American Fireman'. So when the Great Train Robbery came into production. It wasn't anything near new. About it, being the first western. It might be. I do know, it was first western -- filmed in New Jersey. Another myth about the film is that Thomas Edison made it. First off, Thomas Edison didn't really invented film-making. The very first patented film camera was designed in England by Frenchman Louis Le Prince in 1888. Edison took the invention and his work shop improve upon it. William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, a Scottish inventor and employee of Thomas Edison, designed the Kinetographic Camera. Thomas Edison wasn't anywhere near this movie. It was written, directed, and produced by Edwin S. Porter. The closest he came was his company distributed the film. I give Thomas Edison, some props, as he did know how to market the film. Inspired by Scott Marble's play "The Great Train Robbery" (1896); the ten minutes long movie, depicts a group of criminals robbing a train and its passengers, escaping in the uncoupled locomotive, and being pursued and killed by a posse recruited from a local dance hall. Apart from the title card and the famous shot of an outlaw firing at the audience, the film consists of thirteen shots, taking place in three interior and a variety of exterior locations. There are no famous silent film inter titles. It was one of the longest narrative films produced. The movie was ground-breaking in the milestone of film making. It contains early uses of what would come to be standard cinematic techniques: composite editing (via multiple exposure), location shooting, intercutting between simultaneously-occurring scenes, cutting within the same scene to compress time, and camera movement. Some prints were also hand colored in certain scenes. The movie was surprising very violent; this was way before any Hayes Codes was established. I was deeply move, how realistic, the movie was to the real life era. It wasn't the same corny Westerns film that came out in the 1930 thru the 1950. It wasn't the over the top, Spaghetti Western of the 1960s & 1970s. This film look like it came from that era. It indeed posed and acted in faithful adaption. I love the fact, that the final shot of a gun being fired toward the camera had a profound effect on audiences. As cinema was in its infancy, many people who saw the film thought that they were actually about to be shot. I can sort of see why. It did had a quite a jump in quick shots. Imagine what that would have been for people who have not yet developed the 'it's only a movie' instinct. I love how the movie influence other future works like the James bond series, with the gun barrel sequences. The final shot is also paid homage in Martin Scorsese's 1990 film, 'Goodfellas' & Ridley Scott's 2007 film 'American Gangster'. In 1990, The Great Train Robbery was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant'. The movie is in the public domain due to age. Most copies are incredibly well preserved. Others could have wear & tear. In my version, the night scenes were a little too dark. Another fault is that there was no original soundtrack. Films from this period were accompanied by whatever the pianist, organist, orchestra decided to play for the most part. It was later in the silent era when scores were written specifically for the film and many of those no longer survive. Overall: it's historical valuable, and fun to watch. A must watch for any silent film fan.

The-Social-Introvert A lot of the time with oldies you have to acknowledge the film with have more than a few outdated characteristics and probably isn't a good watch in today's age. In fact, you can't come away from a pre- 1930's film and say it's anything other than a classic lest you be out casted from the ranks of cinephiles and film buffs. If truth be told, there are a number of silent films that cannot really be enjoyed today. So you can imagine my surprise when I sat down to watch The Great Train Robbery to I found it to be quite the experience.It's truly amazing to think that the film is over a hundred years old. Imagine being a member of the audience who first saw it! What must have they though when the obvious dummy was thrown off the train? That would have been very innovative for the time.You can see why this was such a sensation back then, and why the picture is considered an icon in cinema history. As one of the first movies ever to employ a narrative technique, The Great Train Robbery earns its right as a historical landmark. Even then, you can still enjoy it purely on a story level. I was well engaged with the films plot, as we (unusually) stayed with the bandit for most of the time and watched them succeed in robbing the train but then fall victim to the wrath of the law. A variety of effective techniques that of course did not include sound or colour or anything else we take for granted in films the movie, the birthplace of the western genre, is able to increase the excitement and suspense levels. From the motion effect inside the train to the scenes filmed in the outdoors, The Great Train Robbery holds up very well. There is even a panning shot and some cross cutting.Not to mention the classic closing shot of George Barnes emptying his six shooter at the audience at the end of the film. It's possibly the most iconic scene in movie history. You can only imagine how that affected startled audiences in 1903. As referenced in the closing shot of Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas, it is one of the best examples of breaking the fourth wall that I have seen…and it's a hundred and eleven years old.My Rating: 7.5/10

MissSimonetta The Great Train Robbery (1903) is an early and important film that still manages to be entertaining. It's great stuff and feels less dated than most other movies made in the 1900s, though its achievements would be quickly surpassed in the next few years.It's only twelve minutes long, but it tells its simple story well. The characters and situations are funny in the most basic way, even in this age of one-liners and 'dumb' humor ala Zoolander.Yes, the whole thing is crude compared to the much more sophisticated film-making which would emerge in the mid-1910s, but one cannot deny its immense importance in narrative storytelling in cinema.