--- title: "The Great Train Robbery" year: 1903 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/the-great-train-robbery" fi1m_id: "the-great-train-robbery" imdb_id: "tt0000439" tmdb_id: 5698 wikidata_id: "Q470329" fi1m_score: 70 critics_reviews: 1 published: "2026-09-24T23:22:52.104670+00:00" updated: "2026-09-24T23:23:00.290717+00:00" region: "PA" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # The Great Train Robbery (1903) Directed by Edwin S. Porter · 12m · Western, Crime, Action, Adventure ## Identity The Great Train Robbery - **Canonical:** https://film.one/film/the-great-train-robbery - **Type:** Film - **Fi1m ID:** the-great-train-robbery - **IMDb ID:** tt0000439 - **TMDB ID:** 5698 - **Wikidata ID:** Q470329 - **Same entity:** https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0000439/, https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/5698, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q470329 **Fi1m score: 70** · Critics: 1 of 6 reviews so far *In a sentence:* Four men rob a train in twelve minutes and one of them still finds time to shoot at us > Edwin S. Porter’s twelve-minute hold-up is one of the first films to cut from one place to another and trust the audience to follow. The acting is stage-bound and the gunfights are a scramble, but the chase still moves and one shot still startles. ## Synopsis A railway telegraph office somewhere in the American West. Four bandits (Broncho Billy Anderson, Frank Hanaway and others) burst in, force the operator at gunpoint to signal an approaching train to stop for water, then bind and gag him. As the engine takes on water they climb aboard unseen. In the mail car they shoot the messenger and blow open the strongbox. On the tender one of them fights the fireman while another holds a pistol on the driver. They uncouple the engine and march the passengers out beside the line, emptying pockets down the row. Back at the office, the operator’s small daughter (Mary Snow) arrives with his dinner. In the town dance hall, a stranger is made to jig by shots at his feet. ## Review Edwin S. Porter’s *The Great Train Robbery* runs twelve minutes and does what its title says. Four men hold up a train, and men on horses go after them. Porter directed, wrote and produced it for the Edison company and shot it with Blair Smith, working from the bones of Scott Marble’s stage melodrama of the same name. What he wanted to do was something the stage could not: put the audience in the telegraph office, then on the tender of a moving engine, then beside the track, then in a dance hall, and trust them to understand that these places belonged to one story. That was not a safe bet in 1903. It paid. The shots that people who care about how films are made will point to are the two in which a train passes behind an opening while something else happens in front of it: the window of the telegraph office, and later the open door of the mail car during a fight. Porter and Smith masked the gap, filmed the office, then ran the film through again with the train in the space. It looks like a painted backcloth until the train moves, and then it looks like a window. Nearer the middle, after a run of shots from a camera that has not moved once, the frame turns to follow the bandits down an embankment to their horses. We had not expected that to matter. It does; it is the moment the film stops being a stage and becomes a place. What happens in front of the camera is a different matter. The passengers are lined up along the track in a single row facing the lens, hands raised, as tidy as a chorus. A bandit shoots a man who runs, and the man does his dying with his arms out. Broncho Billy Anderson plays three parts, one of the robbers, that shot passenger, and the tenderfoot in the dance hall made to jig by pistol shots at his feet, and in none of them does anyone ask him to do less than the back row could see. Marie Murray leads the dancing. Mary Snow, as the operator’s daughter, has the one piece of business in the film that is done for the camera rather than the stalls, kneeling to a father who does not move. On the tender, a bandit and the fireman grapple and the fireman goes over the side, and by then the fireman is unmistakably a stuffed suit with a hat on. We laughed, then felt slightly ashamed, because a moment later the film cut to the woods and the horses and the shooting and we found our pulse had gone up anyway. The gunfight has no geography at all, men in a clearing firing in the general direction of other men, and it still works, because the cutting between hunted and hunters does the job the staging cannot. In the tinted prints the colour is painted on by hand and only where Porter wants it: the little girl’s frock, the puff of smoke from a revolver, the flash when the strongbox goes up. Everything else stays grey. Then there is the shot. A man in a black hat (George Barnes) stands against a plain backdrop, looks straight down the lens, raises a revolver and empties it at us. It has nothing to do with the story; it is a thing done to the audience, and Porter plainly knew it. We have seen the still on a hundred book covers and knew to the second when it was coming. We flinched anyway. It is the only close shot in the film and the only time anyone looks at the camera. Against the Western as it became, this is the sketch on the napkin: the hold-up, the saloon, the posse, all present and none developed. The men have no names and no reasons. Nobody is good or bad beyond which side of the guns they stand. That is fair for twelve minutes in 1903; the genre spent the next century filling in the rest. It reached British cinemas on 23 January 1904 and carries a U certificate, which seems generous to the gentleman with the revolver. Twelve minutes is a fair ask of anyone. Watch it once for the story and once more for the seams, which is where all the interest is. *Fi1m score 70, published 24 September 2026.* ## Straight answers **Is The Great Train Robbery worth watching?** *The Great Train Robbery* is worth twelve minutes of anyone's time, and we scored it 70. The acting is stage-bound and the gunfight has no geography, but the cutting between places still works and one shot still startles. Watch it once for the story and once more for the seams, where the interest is. **How long is The Great Train Robbery, and what is it rated?** *The Great Train Robbery* runs 12m. It is a western and crime film. **Where can I watch The Great Train Robbery in Panama?** *The Great Train Robbery* is not on any streaming or rental service in Panama at the moment. It is available in 1 other country; change your country at the top of the page to see where. Availability is checked daily. **How violent or frightening is The Great Train Robbery, and is it suitable for children?** *The Great Train Robbery* carries a U certificate and is mild enough for most children, though a man is shot and dies with his arms out and a fireman is thrown from a moving engine. The one moment that may startle is a bandit who looks down the lens and empties his revolver at the audience. It is over in seconds. **How does The Great Train Robbery compare to A Trip to the Moon?** *The Great Train Robbery* and [*A Trip to the Moon*](https://film.one/film/a-trip-to-the-moon) are the two founding ideas of early cinema: Porter cuts between places and trusts you to follow, Méliès stays in the stalls and works his tricks with painted sets and trapdoors. Méliès's film is the funnier and handsomer; Porter's moves more and points more clearly at where films went. See both. **What should I watch after The Great Train Robbery?** After *The Great Train Robbery*, try [*A Trip to the Moon*](https://film.one/film/a-trip-to-the-moon) (1902, Fi1m 82): Méliès does with painted sets and trapdoors what Porter does with cutting; the other founding idea. Then [*The General*](https://film.one/film/the-general) (1926, Fi1m 91): Keaton puts a real man, not a dummy, on a real moving engine; and [*Hugo*](https://film.one/film/hugo) (2011, Fi1m 76): Scorsese’s children’s film about the men who made these pictures, and why they matter. ### Reviews we read (1) - **Radio Times**, David Parkinson (3/5): The critic presents the short as simple but groundbreaking and significant to film history. They praise its innovations in screen storytelling, especially continuity editing. [Read](https://www.radiotimes.com/movie-guide/b-5f4rbf/the-great-train-robbery/) ## Details - **Director:** Edwin S. Porter - **Director:** Edwin S. Porter - **Writer:** Edwin S. Porter - **Story:** Scott Marble - **Cinematography:** Blair Smith, Edwin S. Porter - **Producer:** Edwin S. Porter - **Cast:** Broncho Billy Anderson as Bandit / Shot Passenger / Tenderfoot Dancer (uncredited); John Manus Dougherty Sr. as Bandit (uncredited); Frank Hanaway as Bandit (uncredited); Adam Charles Hayman as Bandit (uncredited); Robert Milasch as Trainman / Bandit (uncredited); Marie Murray as Dance-Hall Dancer (uncredited); Mary Snow as Little Girl (uncredited); A.C. Abadie as Sheriff (uncredited) - **Runtime:** 12m - **First release (the US):** 7 December 1903 - **Genres:** Western, Crime, Action, Adventure - **Budget:** $150 ## Where to watch in Panama Not streaming, renting or buying in Panama at the last check. Also available in: AT. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *A Trip to the Moon* (1902), Fi1m 82: Méliès does with painted sets and trapdoors what Porter does with cutting; the other founding idea. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/a-trip-to-the-moon.md) - *Rescued by Rover* (1905): A British dog crosses a town in a straight line of cuts, two years on. - *The General* (1926), Fi1m 91: Keaton puts a real man, not a dummy, on a real moving engine. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-general.md) - *The Wild Bunch* (1969): The train robbery grown up, slow and bloody, with the posse given faces. - *Hugo* (2011), Fi1m 76: Scorsese’s children’s film about the men who made these pictures, and why they matter. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/hugo.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/the-great-train-robbery