This movie is a classic tale of bad guys preying on innocent people. It's the first Western on the list. I'm amazed that from the start of the list, the movies fall into very clear genres; so far I've seen a sci-fi/fantasy and a Western.
The plot is very simple: bad guys go on a rampage and terrorize various innocent people before they are finally apprehended and killed.
Some of the scenes were shot aboard a moving train, which is pretty exciting.
Again, the original score must be lost. I wonder how far I'll get in the list before I see a movie with its original score.
The most famous shot from this movie is probably the one at the end where one of the bad guys (Justus D. Barnes) fires a gun point-blank at the camera.
That must have been pretty shocking to audiences in 1903 to see a gun pointed at them, even if it was from a movie screen. It's the only closeup of anyone's face in the whole movie. Martin Scorsese paid homage to this particular shot in Goodfellas (my favorite mafia movie) where Joe Pesci fires a gun at the camera at the end of the movie.
The plot is very simple: bad guys go on a rampage and terrorize various innocent people before they are finally apprehended and killed.
Some of the scenes were shot aboard a moving train, which is pretty exciting.
Again, the original score must be lost. I wonder how far I'll get in the list before I see a movie with its original score.
The most famous shot from this movie is probably the one at the end where one of the bad guys (Justus D. Barnes) fires a gun point-blank at the camera.
That must have been pretty shocking to audiences in 1903 to see a gun pointed at them, even if it was from a movie screen. It's the only closeup of anyone's face in the whole movie. Martin Scorsese paid homage to this particular shot in Goodfellas (my favorite mafia movie) where Joe Pesci fires a gun at the camera at the end of the movie.
(0:05 mark of this video)
Scorsese also put a nod to The Great Train Robbery in his recent movie Hugo, which I haven't seen yet but have heard good things about.
The gunshot scene is also supposedly the inspiration for this:
Pretty cool.
Here's The Great Train Robbery in full.
Fun facts about Justus D. Barnes (the bad guy in the picture above):
- he had a cool name
- at his funeral in 1946, the two eulogies were given by Charlie Chaplin and a young John Wayne. What a legacy!
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