The Great Train Robbery

A group of bandits stage a brazen train hold-up, only to find a determined posse hot on their heels. The film that invented modern cinema. In just 12 groundbreaking minutes, Edwin S. Porter’s THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY gave birth to the narrative feature film, the Western genre, and countless techniques we still use today: cross-cutting, location shooting, matte effects, and the first-ever close-up of a gun pointed straight at the audience (a shot so shocking that theatergoers reportedly screamed and ducked). Filmed in New Jersey with real Bronx gang members as outlaws, this Edison Studios production became the most commercially successful film of the pre-Griffith era, copied, re-enacted, and distributed worldwide. The moment cinema stopped being a novelty and became storytelling. “Arguably the most influential film ever made.” - Martin Scorsese “The first real movie.” - American Film Institute 4K restoration · 12 minutes · USA · 1903 · Silent Watch the birth of the movies.