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The Great Train Robbery was the robbery of £2.61 million [2] (calculated to present-day value of £69 million - or $73,547,750) from a Royal Mail train travelling from Glasgow to London on the West Coast Main Line in the early hours of 8 August 1963 at Bridego Railway Bridge, Ledburn, near Mentmore in Buckinghamshire, England.
- Overview
- Production notes and credits
- Cast
The Great Train Robbery, American silent western film, released in 1903, that is historically significant for its innovative approach to film editing and narration. The Great Train Robbery is acknowledged as the first narrative film to successfully establish continuity of action (the process of combining related, but noncontinuous, shots into a cohesive sequence). The film’s simple story follows four bandits who stage a train robbery and are eventually tracked down and defeated by a local posse. It is one of the earliest American silent films to survive, and it is considered an essential film classic.
The Great Train Robbery was directed by American filmmaker Edwin S. Porter, a pioneering director whose innovative use of cross-cutting (cutting between two or more shots to show simultaneous action), location shooting, and close-ups revolutionized filmmaking. He worked as a director and camera operator on several early Edison-produced films, including Kansas Saloon Smashers (1901) and The Finish of Bridget McKeen (1901). The Great Train Robbery was written by Porter and American playwright Scott Marble and was partially based on Marble’s play of the same name. It was filmed in November 1903 at Edison’s New York City studio and at outdoor locations in Essex county parks in New Jersey and along the Lackawanna Railroad, likely between Denville and Dover, New Jersey. It had a budget of $150 (which is roughly equivalent to $5,100 in 2023).
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The film’s story is simple yet compelling. Two bandits force a telegraph operator to order a train to stop, before they knock him unconscious and tie him up. When the train stops, the group of bandits, now numbering four, slips aboard; two of them enter a mail car, kill the mail car’s messenger, and use an explosive to open a strongbox containing valuables. In the meantime, the two other bandits attempt to overtake the train’s engineer and fireman. A dramatic fight ensues between one of the bandits and the fireman, who is knocked senseless and thrown from the moving train. The bandits order the engineer to stop the train, and then the passengers are lined up and robbed at gunpoint. One passenger attempts to run away and is shot. The bandits steal the locomotive, drive it down the railroad line, abandon the locomotive, and flee on horseback with their loot. Assisted by his daughter, the telegraph operator awakens and staggers into a busy saloon to tell the locals about the robbery, and a posse is quickly formed. The posse eventually tracks down the bandits and shoots them all dead. The film ends with a startling close-up of American actor Justus D. Barnes, who fires his pistol repeatedly while facing the audience.
The establishment of temporal continuity was problematic in early silent films, and The Great Train Robbery is acknowledged to be the first narrative film to have achieved such continuity of action. Using 14 separate noncontinuous shots, Porter shows the robbery, the formation of the posse, and the pursuit of the robbers—a dramatic departure from the frontally composed, theatrical staging used by French filmmaker Georges Méliès and other contemporaries. The film is also notable for its use of outdoor locations, which made filming challenging because of the handling and maneuvering of large cameras and other equipment, and its expansive cast of players. Porter’s use of cross-cutting, panning shots, and the close-up at the film’s conclusion was not new; however, The Great Train Robbery was the first film to use these techniques in a single motion picture.
•Studio: Edison Manufacturing Company
•Director: Edwin S. Porter
•Producer: Thomas Edison
•Writers: Edwin S. Porter and Scott Marble
•Gilbert M. (“Bronco Billy”) Anderson (bandit)
•A.C. Abadie (sheriff)
•Justus D. Barnes (bandit)
•Walter Cameron (sheriff)
•John Manus Dougherty, Sr. (bandit)
•Frank Hanaway (bandit)
On Monday 11 May 1812, an unremarkable, anonymous man, just over 40 years of age, made his way to the Palace of Westminster, the seat of government in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. No one could have known that on the inside left of his overcoat he had a special…
Produced by Thomas Edison but directed and filmed by Edison Company employee Edwin S. Porter, the 12-minute-long silent film, The Great Train Robbery (1903), was the first narrative movie—one that told a story.
Dec 3, 2013 · When The Great Train Robbery debuted in December of 1903, Henry Ford had recently sold his first car, the Boston Americans had just won the first modern World Series, and Theodore Roosevelt was president of the United States. Filmmaking was in its infancy.
Jul 16, 2014 · At 3 a.m. on Thursday, August 8, 1963, a British mail train heading from Glasgow to London slowed for a red signal near the village of Cheddington, about 36 miles northwest of its...
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Jun 20, 2022 · Released in 1903 and filmed in the least Western locations you could imagine — New York and New Jersey, which was then the studio capital of the world — the silent movie “The Great Train Robbery” fused many of the relatively new filming and editing techniques of the time to make it an instant classic.
