Talk:The Great Train Robbery (1903 film)

Porter's most successful film

I have removed the sentence: "This was Porter's most successful film." We do not know the gross or net this picture made for Edison. But given the economics of film exhibition in 1903 vs. those of the 1910s, it is more likely that the five features he directed starring Mary Pickford in 1913-1914 were more financially successful. Purpose-built cinemas were virtually unknown in 1903; movies were one act of many on a typical theater bill, and there was only so much of the box office that could be devoted to the cost of the films when live performers also had to be paid.—Walloon 09:30, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

uncited material

There is a big section at the end of the first paragraph that is both uncited and contradicts statements made earlier in the paragraph.

"The film uses simple editing techniques (each scene is a single shot) and the story is mostly linear (with only a few "meanwhile" moments), but it represents a significant step in movie making, being one of the first "narrative" movies of significant length. It was quite successful in theaters and was imitated many times."

I'm gonna remove this section, if someone can cite it, bring it back--67.86.120.246 (talk) 07:04, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Score or Presentation?

Does anyone have any sources for any score or presentation for how this film was originally presented to audiences? 76.21.107.221 (talk) 05:28, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Expanded article

Apologies to all for the sudden dump of new information into the article. I was initially just going to add some details and remove the more unreliable refs, but when I started digging up more trustworthy film history books (most of them freely available at the Internet Archive—hooray!), it became clear that some restructuring was needed.

As the article now indicates, the main problem is that a bunch of extraordinary claims keep getting made about this film in popular-audience books, even though reputable film historians have been debunking them over and over again for more than fifty years. What this means for WP is that we have to be very cautious, not only with the usual unreliable sources like IMDb and personal blogs, but also with most books that mention The Great Train Robbery in passing. A lot of them are just blithely recycling old claims. I hope the new prose throws some fairer light on the film and its context.--Lemuellio (talk) 15:02, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Note that some of the mistaken claims can even be found in other Wikipedia articles. I just corrected an image caption at Cinema of the United States that repeats the "first western" claim. There are likely others. The challenge is if such claims have cited sources which follows Wikipedia's rules but if the source are themselves mistaken... 136.159.160.121 (talk) 16:18, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Featured picture scheduled for POTD

Hello! This is to let editors know that File:The Great Train Robbery (1903).webm, a featured picture used in this article, has been selected as the English Wikipedia's picture of the day (POTD) for June 25, 2024. A preview of the POTD is displayed below and can be edited at Template:POTD/2024-06-25. For the greater benefit of readers, any potential improvements or maintenance that could benefit the quality of this article should be done before its scheduled appearance on the Main Page. If you have any concerns, please place a message at Wikipedia talk:Picture of the day. Thank you!  — Amakuru (talk) 20:10, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

The Great Train Robbery is a 1903 American silent film made by Edwin S. Porter for the Edison Manufacturing Company. It follows a gang of outlaws who hold up and rob a steam locomotive at a station in the American West, flee across mountainous terrain, and are finally defeated by a posse of locals. The short film draws on many sources, including a robust existing tradition of Western films, recent European innovations in film technique, the play of the same name by Scott Marble, the popularity of train-themed films, and possibly real-life incidents involving outlaws such as Butch Cassidy.

Film credit: Edwin S. Porter

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