The Little Train Robbery

Edwin S. Porter made one of the most important early films "The Great Train Robbery". Some have referred to it as the first full-length film, though Georges Méliès made his "Voyage Dans Le Lune" the same year and a couple other films also claim to be the first. Regardless, it was a huge milestone in film history and was the first great American western. So, it's not at all surprising that Porter would seek to capitalize on this success--though I am surprised it took him two full years to get to "The Little Train Robbery".

"The Little Train Robbery" is a parody of his previous film--and it IS unusual for a person to parody their own work. In this case, you have a similar plot but it's acted by kids. And, as they are kids, they ride ponies and the train is an amusement park type they'd have for the young kids. It's a clever idea BUT it's also an idea that runs thin--even when full-length meant 10-20 minutes as it did in 1905. In many ways, it's a lot like the much later (and dreadfully awful) "The Terror of Tiny Town"--the first all-midget western! So is it worth your time? Not especially. But, if you love early films and have already seen "The Great Train Robbery", it's worth a look.

The first parody in the history of cinema. A remake of the very first Western, 'The great train robbery', but here children are the outlaws. A funny idea: a little train robbery. Many small objects (short talvez, ponies....) and obviously that train contribute to an amusing outcome. However, I did miss a remake of the famous shooting scene.

I liked this spoof. It makes me feel weird knowing that all of those children are dead since the movie was recorded in 1905. One day I'll be dead and someone will look at my review.

In spoofing his own hit movie, Edwin S. Porter produces a fairly creative parody that is worth seeing in itself, and that is perhaps even more interesting in historical terms. "The Little Train Robbery" is a re-working of the classic "The Great Train Robbery", with all the characters changed to children, and most of the settings miniaturized accordingly.

The story often parallels the original quite closely, and the more familiar you are with the original, the more similarities you can spot. So this is more than just one of the era's common remakes of the one-shot films that had become popular - it involved a detailed look at the original movie, with many choices as to how closely to follow it. It is certainly one of the most detailed examples of this kind to be found in the first decade or so of cinema history.

There are also times when, in contrast to the original, details are changed to play up the fact that the characters here are all children. As such, it is interesting in terms of the age-old debate as to how far behavior, especially of the young, might be influenced by the movies. Attitudes always change from one era to the next, and not always in the same direction. Attitudes in past eras were not always as simple as we may assume them to have been, and this is the kind of example that provides an interesting perspective on the issue.

Seen simply as a movie, this is not one of the best of its era, but it has some clever features, and it still works well enough. To the audiences of the time, to whom "The Great Train Robbery" would have been one of the very best movies they had ever seen, there would probably have been noticeable interest in this parody version.

Edwin S. Porter's "The Great Train Robbery" met with great success, being the first western and one of the first 'full length' (by the standards of the time) movies. So, two years later he thought to parody it, by changing the bandits to children who commit crimes. Thus, "The Little Train Robbery" was made. While the idea is clever at least, there is no medium closeup of the bandit firing at the camera at the end and because of the lack of this, it has not become nearly as well known.

If you've seen the original movie before then you're probably already familiar with the plot: a train is robbed, bandits are caught. The thing isn't even much of a western at all like the original because of the lack of violence (no gun shots are fired and the closest they get is one kid hitting the engineer over the head) and a great deal of it is devoted to the chase scenes, which go on a little too long. It isn't a bad film by any means but lacks the action and attention-holding pacing of its predecessor. Worthwhile for fans of "The Great Train Robbery", but if you haven't seen that yet then you'll have to watch it before giving this one a go.