April 21 - Edwin S. Porter

Happy Birthday, Edwin S. Porter! Born today in 1870 as Edwin Stanton Porter, this American film pioneer is most famous as a studio manager, cinematographer  producer and director with the Edison Manufacturing Company and the Famous Players Film Company. 

  

Of over two hundred and fifty films created by Porter, his most important includes the twelve-minute 1903 American silent black and white action/Western film 'The Great Train Robbery'. Porter edited, co-filmed, wrote, produced and directed the short as well. 

The film was inspired by American playwright Scott Marble's eponymous 1896 play, of which may also have been inspired by a 1900 train robbery perpetrated by Robert LeRoy Parker, better known as Butch Cassidy. 

  

Actors in the short included Alfred C. Abadie, Justus D. Barnes and "Broncho Billy" Anderson, although there were no credits. It was filmed in Milltown, New Jersey on a budget of $150 ($4,400 today). 

  

The film used a number of then-unconventional techniques, including composite editing, on-location shooting, and frequent camera movement, of which revolutionized filmmaking. 

  

One of the most iconic scenes in cinematic history is when "Broncho Billy" fires his gun point black at the screen in the final shot. 

  

'The Great Train Robbery' is often described as one of the earliest to use the technique of cross cutting, in which two scenes are shown to be occurring simultaneously but in different locations. 

  

In fact, the scenes of the train robbery and the telegraph operator are told independently, with no intercutting of shots. Some prints were also hand colored in certain scenes. 

  

Techniques used in the film were inspired by those used in early English cinema director Frank Mottershaw's five-minute British silent black and white crime/drama film 'A Daring Daylight Burglary', released earlier in the year. The film is also known as 'A Daring Daylight Robbery'. 

  

Film historians now largely consider 'The Great Train Robbery' to be the first American action film and the first Western film with a "recognizable form, "although it post-dates the one-minute 1899 British silent black and white Western film 'Kidnapping by Indians' by several years. 

  

Today,'The Great Train Robbery' is considered to be a milestone in filmmaking, expanding on Porter's previous work.

In 1990,'The Great Train Robbery' was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".  

   

Other important works by Porter include 'Jack and the Beanstalk' (1902), 'Life of an American Fireman' (1903), 'Kleptomaniac' (1905), 'Life of a Cowboy' (1906), 'Rescued from an Eagle's Nest' (1908), and 'The Prisoner of Zenda' (1913) . 

  

Porter had been active from 1898–1915. 

  

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