Der große Eisenbahnraub

It's hard to assign "The Great Train Robbery" a rating, as it shouldn't really be watched as a film the way we watch films now. But from a historical perspective, it's fascinating, and is an excellent example of the use of film editing, an art form then in its infancy and now an award category recognized every year at the Oscars.

Before this movie, it wasn't customary to tell multiple story lines simultaneously, but here, various activities going on in different locations are intercut to create suspense. D.W. Griffith would use this technique much more ambitiously (and combine it with many other developing film techniques) in "The Birth of a Nation" over ten years later, but credit must be given to "Train Robbery" for blazing a trail.

Also, this is the movie famous for the shot of an outlaw shooting a gun directly at the camera. I can't imagine what effect this had on audiences at the time, who were probably diving behind their chairs for cover.

Grade: A

This film, often lauded as one of the first movies to include a linear narrative within its running time, came out of the Edison company over a hundred years ago, following their experiments in the previous decades with shorter topical pieces such as cockfighting, dancers, and other limited scenarios.

'The Great Train Robbery' is a simple enough story - a train is robbed, there is a shoot-out. The interesting scenes for me were the ones where the passengers are held at gunpoint while their valuables are collected, the shoot-out with its hand-coloured bursts of gunfire, and the famous final shot where a gun is fired directly at the audience. Not too frightening now, but back in those days this was quite an innovation.

Historically important and with a basic plot still in use today, this film holds significant interest for a wide audience (and will take less than a quarter of an hour of your time to view).

I just saw "The Great Train Robbery" in its entirety for the first time and I was truly amazed. Its hard to believe that the film is over 100 years old. It was shot from a stationary camera but it employs many of the cinematic techniques that have since become commonplace such as cross-cutting, the chase, the shootout etc. VCI Entertainment has released a marvelous 100 Year Anniversary Edition of the film in two versions...a completely silent version from the print owned by the U.S. Library of Congress and a second version with added music, color tints and sound effects.

Briefly, the story (filmed in the "wilds" of New Jersey), centers on four bandits who subdue a station agent (to keep him from sending out an alarm) and then climb aboard a train when it stops to take on water. Two of the bandits proceed to the mail car, kill the agent and make off with the loot. The others take care of the engineer and his fireman. One can imagine what the early audiences must have thought when one of the bandits suddenly throws the fireman off of the train. The cutting from the live action with the bandit and the fireman to the obvious dummy was quite innovative for the time.

The bandits then line up the passengers and rob them killing one of them as he tries to escape. They then ride the engine down the tracks to their waiting horses. Meanwhile the town folk are alerted at a local hoedown and form a posse to go after the robbers. What follows is a great little chase scene and the final showdown between the good guys and the bad guys, where you know who get what's coming to them.

The closing shot of actor George Barnes emptying his six shooter at the audience is perhaps one of the most famous shots in cinematic history. One can only imagine the effect that it must have had on the early audiences. I had always thought that this shot was at the beginning of the film. Early western pioneer "Broncho" Billy Anderson plays four roles in the film including one of the bandits.

Most of the scenes are filmed in medium to long shots. You don't really see the actors faces (except for Barnes as noted). But it is still a very good film for this or any time. It tells a complete and believable story in about 12 minutes and sets the stage for the many classic silent films that were to follow.

A truly historic cinematic experience.

What can one say about an 11 minute film, which is reputed to be the first narrative motion picture to be shot in the United States? What does one compare it to when nothing had come before it? What is even more amazing is that parts of this movie are in color! The women's dresses at the dance are in color - each frame had been hand colored. The flashes from the barrels of the six shooters are red and an explosion sends up a riot of color. There is even a little girl in a red coat. Take that, Steven Spielberg!! Except for the last five seconds, all of the shots are in medium to long. The camera never moves. For each sequence, it is set in place and actors move in front of it.

It is a western, of course (shot in the wilds of New Jersey). A gang of bad guys knock out a train station clerk then board a departing train. They move to the car where there is a safe, blow the safe, stop the train and rob the passengers. Back in town, the clerk revives and tries to get help but passes out again. A little girl comes in wakes him up. The townspeople are having a dance when the clerk runs in to form a posse. The posse rides out and surrounds the gang, who is counting the loot in the woods. There is a gunfight and the robbers are killed. That is the whole story, but there is one short scene left - one of the most remarkable in film history. The all color episode lasts about 5 seconds. In medium close-up, a cowboy raises his pistol, points it directly at the camera, and fires three times. It is difficult for us to understand why this is here or what purpose it served. But when people who had never seen a movie before and didn't have any understanding of the technology first saw this man shooting at them, they screamed, fell to the floor, and ran for the door. It is also said that some in the audience pulled firearms and shot back. It is an early testament to the power that motion pictures had, even in its earliest incarnation. Thankfully, TCM ran TGTR without any modern musical accompaniment, as thousands must have seen it in the nineteen-aughts. I watched in total amazement. I was transported. Later, I reflected on how far movies had come and how little they had changed in the last 100 years. This movie is a priceless historical artifact that shows us just how much the past is still with us.

As an early film, this film is quite spectacular. Ok, so it's only twelve minutes, but that is twelve minutes of pure action and entertainment. When this film was made, things like special effects were hardly thought of, but notice how well the transgression from person to doll on the "throw the dead guy off the train" goes, and how nicely they have "moved the train" without moving the camera when they leave the locomotive behind.

This movie is probably the best preview to how modern westerns became, at least if you take the best twelve minutes of many westerns, the twelve where people get shot, beat up and alerted. The movie follows it's storyline perfectly, and is easy to grasp the continuance throughout the film, in all, quite a masterpiece that comes highly recommended.

Christian Lockert