The Great Train Robbery
“It electrified dad! It terrified mother! It will amuse you!”
Edwin S. PorterCast
Justus D. Barnes Broncho Billy Anderson Marie Murray
Plot
A group of bandits hold up a telegraph operator, board a train, blow open the safe and rob the passengers before escaping on horseback. A posse is formed at a dance and chases them down. In the last shot, a bandit fires his pistol straight at the audience. Edwin S. Porter's 1903 short, about twelve minutes long, was shot on location in New Jersey and uses cutting between separate places and a pan to follow the action. It is among the earliest Westerns and a landmark in how stories were told on film.
Sinekatalog’s take
Edwin S. Porter's 1903 short is a landmark of early narrative cinema. Its holdup, chase and famous final shot of a gun pointed at the audience still thrill, and it helped define the western.Sinekatalog’s own editorial review – not a user or critic quote.
Ratings
IMDb: 7.2 / 10 (23,097 votes)
IMDb rating and vote count from the IMDb ratings dataset (October 2026). Scores change over time.
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