The Great Train Robbery (Short)
Before heading off to work on this beautiful Memorial Day Sunday, I decided to take in Edwin S. Porter’s famous silent classic, “The Great Train Robbery,” and like so many cineastes before me, I fell under it’s spell. The story is simple enough, as it chronicles a famous train robbery, and the events that follow it. Porter’s narrative talents thrust us along from the moment the bandits tie up the train station worker, then take the train in one of the most exciting stretches of film in all of history, and then the chase when the townspeople find out what’s happened. Like so many of the great early films, Porter’s masterpiece is not nearly long enough, but as what might be the first adventure film of the medium, it certainly set a very high standard for everything that came after it.
