The Great Train Robbery (movie)

The Great Train Robbery is a 1903 western film. The film is only twelve minutes long, but it is a milestone in film making and is considered the first movie to tell a fictional story. The film used a number of innovative techniques including parallel editing, camera movement and location shooting. Jump-cuts or cross-cuts were a new, sophisticated editing technique. The film also employed the first pan shots.

The scenes with the gun pointing at the audience and the train rushing towards the audience had audiences at the time screaming in fear, then laughing in relief.

The movie was directed and photographed by Edwin S. Porter, a former Thomas Edison cameraman. The movie starred A.C. Abadie, Gilbert M. "Bronco Billy" Anderson and George Barnes, although there were no credits.

The film has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

An unrelated film, The Great Train Robbery (1979) was directed by Michael Crichton and based on his novel of the same name. The story is loosely based on the true story of Edward Pierce, who engineered the daring theft of a train-load of gold being shipped to the British Army during the Crimean War. It features many picturesque characters and scenes of the Victorian era, particularly the criminal mobs of the time. The film starred Sean Connery and Donald Sutherland.

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The Great Train Robbery of 1963 was a real-life event unrelated to either film.