The first film to have a clear narrative storyline, albeit only 12 minutes long, was The Great Train Robbery (1903), written, directed and photographed by Edwin S. Porter. That's correct, the first "Modern American Film" was a Western... a fact most Western Film scholars are proud to reiterate. It was a milestone in movie making, produced by the Edison Film Company, and was pioneering in a number of the cinematic techniques that it utilized. These elements include double exposures, moving cameras and on-location shooting, to name a few. The Great Train Robbery was loosely based on the brazen exploits of the Wild Bunch, namely Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, as evidenced by the scene where explosives are used to open the locked strong-box. On a related historic side note, Butch and Sundance were in New York City, en route to South America, around the time The Great Train Robbery was released, and it is more than likely that the two would have caught a showing of it.
Armed men enter a railroad telegraph office, forcing the operator to signal the train to stop, before leaving him bound up on the floor...
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| The Great Train Robbery. 1903 |
The bandits board the train, but find the safe to be locked. They must use dynamite to open it...
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| The Great Train Robbery. 1903 |
They de-board and a person trying to escape is shot...
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| The Great Train Robbery. 1903 |
The robbers flee with the money...
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| The Great Train Robbery. 1903 |
A young girl frees the telegraph operator, who promptly alerts the authorities, and the chase is on...
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| The Great Train Robbery. 1903 |
The inevitable shoot-out occurs...
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| The Great Train Robbery. 1903 |
