Verified Document

Silent Film Critic One Cannot Thesis

The first scene of The Great Train Robbery takes place inside the railroad telegraph office when two masked bandits are able to force the telegraph operator stop a train that is approaching the station so that they can climb aboard. After getting the telegraph operator to lie about a water stop, the next scene finds the train at the water tower by the station where the bandits will sneak onto the train. The next scene shows the mail messenger in the mail car working before he hears a strange noise. When he looks through the door's keyhole, he sees the two bandits -- the men from the station. The messenger immediately locks the lock box that contains the valuables and throws the key out the open door as moving scenery rushes by. These first three scenes are woven together seamlessly in order to create the set-up for the movie. These scenes -- and the continuing scenes -- all occur within unbroken takes that last long enough to make story beats.

What appears different in Porter's film is that his scenes are much more photographic than other films preceding it where many filmmakers thought solely in terms of a proscenium. Though the scenes are static shots, they do not appear to be as formal as in other early films, which is most likely due to the framing of shots and the movement of the players. The parallel action that Porter utilizes is something...

He easily moves the audience from station to train, to the bandits, back to the train without having to give the audience any further explanations. The cutting back and forth from scene to scene throughout the film showed that audiences would be able to follow a film even when scenes were juxtaposed in various places and times -- now known as crosscutting (Corrigan 38). The importance of crosscutting in this film is that it shows that a scene did not have to be played out until the very end in order for it to make sense to audiences. It shows incomplete action from cut to cut and it makes the audience infer the connections between the shots.
The Great Train Robbery used editing in an imaginative and innovative way in order to tell this story about bandits. Porter's use of matte shots (such as showing the train through the window of the railroad station at the beginning of the film) suggested something that other films of that time had not -- that there was a much bigger world outside of the studio.

Works Cited:

Auerbach, Jonathan. Body Shots: Early Cinema's Incarnations. University of California

Press; 1st edition, 2007. Print.

Corrigan, Timothy. A Short Guide to Writing About Film. New York: Longman, 2009.

Print.

Dirks, Tim. "The Great Train Robbery." AMC Film Site. AMC, 2010. Web. 26…

Sources used in this document:
Works Cited:

Auerbach, Jonathan. Body Shots: Early Cinema's Incarnations. University of California

Press; 1st edition, 2007. Print.

Corrigan, Timothy. A Short Guide to Writing About Film. New York: Longman, 2009.

Print.
http://www.filmsite.org/grea.html
Cite this Document:
Copy Bibliography Citation

Related Documents

Silent Film and How Critical Reception Shifts Over Time
Words: 2850 Length: 9 Document Type: Research Paper

Silent Film And How Critical Reception Shifts Over Time The objective of this study is to examine the film Das Cabinet Des Dr. Caligari or 'The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" and to examine silent film and how critical reception shifts over time. The film Das Cabinet Des Dr. Caligari or 'The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" echoed the German psychological warfare that had been waged against the people by Hitler and throughout the

Silent Film Nanook of the North by Robert Flaherty
Words: 2202 Length: 6 Document Type: Research Paper

Silent Film: Robert Flaherty and Nanook of the North Robert Flaherty is one of the most renowned filmmakers of all time. He was born in 1883 and died in 1951, so that his life and work encompassed what is frequently referred to as the Golden Age of cinema. Although Flaherty was an American, he lived near the U.S./Canadian border, and went to Toronto for his schooling. His early work experience was

1922 Silent Film Nosferatu: A
Words: 719 Length: 2 Document Type: Term Paper

These subsequent Draculas are all pretenders to the throne, thanks to the iconographic excellence that emerged in the 1922 version. Indeed, subsequent Draculas in many cases have taken on slick, well-dressed, classy appearances, quite the opposite of the repulsive, disgusting, repugnant - and pathetically sickly - Count Orlok. Renowned film critic Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun-Times, 1997) praises the iconography of Mumau's Orlok: "The vampire should come across not like a

Film & TV Terminology Terminology
Words: 6694 Length: 25 Document Type: Research Proposal

In this area, meanings with their endless referrals evolve. These include meanings form discourses, as well as cultural systems of knowledge which structure beliefs, feelings, and values, i.e., ideologies. Language, in turn, produces these temporal "products." During the next section of this thesis, the researcher relates a number of products (terminology) the film/TV industry produced, in answer to the question: What components contribute to the linguistic aspect of a sublanguage

Film Analysis of Sunset Boulevard 1950
Words: 1376 Length: 4 Document Type: Film Review

Sunset Boulevard is a classic film noir produced in 1950 and directed by Billy Wilder. The film begins with the murder of Joe Gillis, a floundering screenwriter who ends up dead in a swimming pool. "Poor dope," the voice over says. "He'd always wanted a pool. Well, in the end he got himself a pool, only the price turned out to be a little high." The voice over, delivered in

Film There Are Numerous Influencing
Words: 2583 Length: 6 Document Type: Essay

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) came in a time when the public became fond of funny westerns. The editors carefully made the movie's beginning and its end in order for it to have an exceptional result consequent to the audience viewing it. The silent beginning and the freeze-frame ending gave the movie an exceptional character, showing the public something that they had never seen before. In times when

Sign Up for Unlimited Study Help

Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.

Get Started Now