Number of user reviews: 82
User score: 7.3
Westerns, as a genre, have been so extensively theorized by this point that it seems useless to analyze Edwin S. Porter's The Great Train Robbery on the level of genre. Is there anyone, at this point, who is not aware of the role that Westerns have played in America's self-mythologization? We know that they are hyper-masculine, they glorify lawlessness and violence, they divide the world into childish caricatures of good and evil, they perpetuate the nation's gun fetish, and they pander to Americans' collective narcissism regarding Manifest Destiny. The ideological work of the Western is more than just well-worn ground; it's a canyon. Likewise, The Great Train Robbery is widely acknowledged for its many technical innovations, such as camera movement and cross-cutting within a scene. And that is about as far as the scholarship goes on Te Great Train Robbery. There hasn't been a single new thing said about it for decades upon decades; everyone is in agreement on how and why it is important. It is as close as film criticism has ever come to a "finished project".
But this all seems based on the mistaken assumption that The Great Train Robbery was (and is) popular because of its adherence to convention. Let me be clear, TGTR is highly conventional in both concept and execution--the mistake lies in the conception of what those conventions are. There is a school of critical thought--perhaps even the dominant school--that views film as a life-affirming, utopian medium that animates the dead and rejuvenates the staid and the ancient. They are, again, half-right: right that film is utopian, but wrong that this utopia is found in life. The conundrum behind all utopia that no one likes to talk about is the question of its opposition: if utopia were indeed attainable, how could anyone want to stop it? How could it not already exist? The only answer is sabotage, whether out of malice or stupidity. If everyone acted in good faith, or if everyone weren't so darn dumb, then utopia would already be here! So, if the world is to be made perfect, it follows that the visionaries must somehow "fix" the problem of the people who don't want it. Some can be re-educated yes, but if their opposition persists, they must be eliminated. And that means death. Every utopia is ultimately a vision of genocide, one that sweeps disagreement to the side so that a certain faction can implement their agenda. It's for the greater good, and all that.
The Great Train Robbery is a death cult, with the film finding ultimate triumph in the complete slaughter of its principal characters, and subsequently, of the audience as well (via the famous "shooting the audience" shot.) Unlike A Trip to the Moon, The Great Train Robbery does not imagine a future, but a present; it is not concerned with possibilities, but with imminent inevitabilities. TGTR forecloses the future in favor of an ending, the ending, death. Yet the film finds this finality gleeful and fun, not so much a source of anxiety as one of relief. The bad guys have been caught, they are dead; the guy onscreen has shot you, and now you're dead; and now the movie is over. The film's correspondence between resolution and death makes it a development over the blunt nihilism of Melies' work (The India Rubber Head, for example), which treat death as a meaningless amusement; there is at least a sense here that lives are bounded, that people cannot be endlessly replicated and re-killed through "movie magic", but that they are singular and finite beings who stay dead. Porter offers no hope of salvation through film, no immortality; if anything, he does the opposite, reminding his audience constantly of the oblivion ahead. The Great Train Robbery offers people one life, and in so doing exhorts them to their most realistic chance for utopia: to find one's meaning and purpose while alive, because there's nothing more after this.
Other connections: Edwin S. Porter was yet another cog in the Edison machine that dominated American film at this point; his most famous work otherwise was probably Life of an American Fireman, which was arguably the first film to feature cross-cutting--though, since that was also released in 1903, it will not be featured in this series. Porter would later direct Niagara Falls (1915), which was the first 3D film ever shown to a public audience.
Other most-voted titles of 1903:
2. Alice in Wonderland (Cecil M. Hepworth and Percy Stow | 1,784 votes)
3. Life of an American Fireman (George S. Fleming and Edwin S. Porter | 1,409 votes)
4. The Music Lover (Georges Melies | 1,287 votes)
5. Electrocuting an Elephant (1,062 votes)
6. The Infernal Boiling Pot (Georges Melies | 834 votes)
7. The Gay Shoe Clerk (Edwin S. Porter | 798 votes)
8. The Monster (Georges Melies | 766 votes)
9. Fairyland: A Kingdom of Fairies (Georges Melies | 711 votes)
10. The Cake-Walk Infernal (Georges Melies | 659 votes)
IMDB lists 2,659 titles for the year altogether.
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