MOVIE OR DEATH #2: "The Great Train Robbery" (1903)

Part 2 of my 1000+ part series.
(For info on that, clickety-click-click)

In which I try to overcome my personal biases against Edison to review perhaps the only Western ever to be filmed in...New Jersey.

TL;DR:

More below The Cut>>>


TITLE: The Great Train Robbery
YEAR RELEASED: 1903
DIRECTOR: Edwin S. Porter
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: USA

Before I even begin, let me plop a huge spoiler warning here:

Like with A Trip to the Moon, this movie is in the public domain and is in the 12-ish minute range:

The movie opens with a fantastic title card in what is possible The Most emblematic kind of old movie font, before it hard-cuts to a guy sitting at a desk in an office who looks like he walked out of the Monopoly board game. He's minding his own business when – gasp! – two dirty scoundrels waltz in and hold him at gunpoint, cruelly forcing him to...hold a pen above a piece of paper?

"You're gonna pose for me - OR ELSE!"

The never-wrong-and-all-knowing Wikipedia informs me that this is a telegraph office, and those two men were holding "the operator at gunpoint to have a train stopped and to transmit orders for the engineer to fill the locomotive's tender at the station's water tank."

...sure, we'll go with that!

In what seems to be NO TIME AT ALL, a train stops outside the office and a man appears at their drive-thru window.

"Gimme a Big Mac meal, and yeah, Imma Super Size it."

Slightly dumber hat guy on the left then manages to knock out Mr. Monopoly by gesturing aggressively in the vicinity of his head. They then conjure rope out of NOWHERE and spend the next, I don't know, minute? hour? tying the definitely unconscious Mr. Monopoly up.

It then cuts to the dirty scoundrels outside by the water tower where there are now FOUR of them. They hide incredibly stealthily (ahem) behind the water tower where the camera holds on them for around 15 seconds. Seriously.

This is what we know you all came for! We'll just hold the shot here. Reeeeeally take this in.

Eventually a train does pull up...eventually...and the four sneak on.

Cut to Sexy Mark Twain sorting through all his fan mail on the train.

"The report of my death was an exaggeration"

But then, GASP! He meets his far too early demise at the hands of two of the dirty scoundrels.

"LOL J/K report away"

They then proceed to rifle through Mark Twain's fan mail and grope at him, while he lies there definitely dead and definitely not moving around. Definitely.

When they can't open up Mark Twain's box with The Good Stuff in it, they use the world's tiniest dynamite to just fucking BLOW IT UP and steal all the fan mail for themselves.

You said it, man

Cut then to the locomotive of the train, where the other two dirty scoundrels confront the guys operating the engine. One of the engineers goes to attack one of the dirty scoundrels, who then punches him so hard that the engineer turns into a literal doll who is then thrown off the train.

"I'll tell you what you can do with your Malibu Dream House!" 

The remaining engineer is then forced to decouple the engine from the cars, and the three of them ride off on the locomotive into the sepia sunset – just kidding, that'd be too interesting. Nah, they just move the locomotive five feet forward and then stop.

Meanwhile, the other two dirty scoundrels shepherd all the passengers (including one who may or may not be Dame Maggie Smith) off the train, with one holding the passengers at gunpoint and the other taking all their shit.

You said it, Maggie

One of the passengers tries to make a run for it before becoming the third casualty in what is perhaps the greatest death scene of all time. I'm pretty sure the Academy Awards were invented for this guy. Those three seconds were the highlight of the entire thing for me, I'm not even joking.

It's good to see his legacy lives on

With all the Shit Claimed, the dirty scoundrels (who have since increased to at least three) skedaddle, leaving the surviving passengers to run to the aid of The Third by...rubbing his face? Whatever works for you, pals.

Cut to the three dirty scoundrels running to the locomotive with their Santa Claus packs in tow. All four take off on the locomotive, only to get off a bit later to run into the sparsest forest maybe ever.

...seriously. Is this A Charlie Brown Christmas?

It turns out they had horses there waiting for them! The camera lingers on them as they mount their horses...and then struggle to mount their horses...and then ride off – no wait, one of them hasn't gotten on yet...ok yes, now ride off. Sigh.

Mr. Monopoly awakens! In maybe one of the most inspirational scenes ever (after the Death of the Third, obvi), Mr. Monopoly genie-in-a-bottle's his way off the ground to then send a telegraph WITH HIS FACE before then immediately falling over again, clearly exhausted from his dance rehearsal.

I guess he knew how to rub it the right way

Little Red (Grey?) Riding Hood then strolls into the office where she comes across our exhausted dance hero. She cuts him loose and then magically heals him by full-on dumping a glass of water on his face.

"I AM HEALED"

Aaaand now we are Up in Da Club.

It's poppin'

We're dancing, and we're dancing, and then someone walks in. And then people shoot at his feet, he dances a jig, and then runs out? What?

Wikipedia-sensei, save me!:

           There is some comic relief at a dance hall, where an Eastern stranger is forced to dance while the locals fire at his feet.

WIKIPEDIA-SENSEI, I ASKED YOU TO SAVE ME.

So that happened. Thankfully we don't have to linger on that too much longer as Mr. Monopoly majestically meanders in motioning motivationally. The men all follow out with their guns on a quest.

"FOR MARK TWAIN!"

Somehow the angry villagers manage to catch up with the dirty scoundrels, shooting and killing one of them. But then in the next scene, the remaining three are by themselves in the Charlie Brown forest, dismounted from their horses and frantically going through the fan mail, with the villagers about twelve states away. Maybe they're robo-horses?

But not even the robo-horses can save them, as the villagers catch up and kill the three remaining ones, with one bleeding out all over the fan mail.

The final shot of the film, after the actual "action" is over, is of a lone bandit looking straight into the camera while firing multiple shots until he runs out of ammo.

Dare I say...arresting

THOUGHTS:

As you definitely may have guessed, this isn't really my thing. I appreciate elements of it: The narrative nature of it with a Western focus. The use of both studio-shot scenes mixed with moving footage, as seen in the scenes with Mark Twain and his fan mail on the train where you can see the scenery moving through the window. The ending scene, which Wikipedia-sensei tells me may have inspired the classic opening to James Bond films.

But my modern sensibilities have difficulty adjusting to the increeeeedibly long shots that are presumably used to establish context and space. I have to remind myself constantly that contemporary audiences wouldn't have knowledge of the same film language and shorthand that are so obvious now, and so likely did need to have their hands held throughout, to a certain extent. Let's just say I'm glad that modern films don't have to spell it out quite so bluntly.

WOULD RECOMMEND?

Eh, it's decently short and in the public domain (=FREE). If you are a huge movie buff or Western fanatic, go for it! Otherwise, I'd say you can skip it.