The Great Train Robbery

“The Great Train Robbery,” a short film made in 1903, is not only one of the first films made but is often considered to be first ever western made.

The film made by Edwin Porter took the archetypal American Western story, already familiar to audiences from dime novels and stage melodrama, and made it an entirely new visual experience. The one-reel film, with a running time of twelve minutes, was assembled in twenty separate shots, along with a startling close-up of a bandit firing at the camera. It used as many as ten different indoor and outdoor locations and was ground-breaking in its use of "cross-cutting" in film editing to show simultaneous action in different places. No earlier film had created such swift movement or variety of scene. The Great Train Robbery was enormously popular. For several years it toured throughout the United States, and in 1905 it was the premier attraction at the first nickelodeon. Its success firmly established motion pictures as commercial entertainment in the United States.

Porter produced (i.e. supervised; the job title "film director" had not yet been developed) and photographed the film in New York and New Jersey in November 1903; the Edison studio began selling it to vaudeville houses and other venues in the following month. The cast included Justus D. Barnes and G. M. Anderson, who may have also helped with planning and staging. Porter's storytelling approach, though not particularly innovative or unusual for 1903, allowed him to include many popular techniques of the time, including scenes staged in wide shots, a matte effect, and an attempt to indicate simultaneous action across multiple scenes. Camera pans, location shooting, and moments of violent action helped give the film a sense of rough-edged immediacy. A special close-up shot, which was unconnected to the story and could either begin or end the film depending on the projectionist's whim, showed Barnes, as the outlaw leader, emptying his gun directly into the camera.

Watch the film here - "The Great Train Robbery" (1903) - 1080p HD - YouTube

But while it is an important film, it is not the first Western Film ever made. Recently a 1899 film “Kidnapped by Indians” has been found. This 1 minute film was filmed in Blackburn in the UK. For the full story - World's first Western movie 'filmed in Blackburn' - BBC News

(For more information The Great Train Robbery (1903 film) - Wikipedia, Edwin S. Porter - Wikipedia )