The Great Train Robbery

Produced by the Edison Company, and directed by Edwin S. Porter, THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY is a landmark in the development of the American film industry and the narrative form. If not the very first story film or the first western, it was among the earliest, and certainly the most sophisticated, in its use of editing techniques, special effects, and location shooting to tell a complete story in a western setting, creating many of the archetypes which would later become conventions of the genre.

Two masked bandits enter a train station and force the telegraph operator to send an order to have the approaching train stop and take water. The bandits then bind and gag...