The Great Train Robbery

Saw The Great Train Robbery, the old Edison film. It was extremely stagey, always shot about twenty feet away, the actors make dramatic left-to-right crosses and hammishly gesticulate as they die (indeed one of the robbers doesn't notice he has already received the killing shot and continues to gesticulate.) I found the film bearable in its brevity. The plot is linear, the characters nonexistent. The only interesting bit was some camera trickery (a train employee is suddenly replaced by a dummy) and the ending, which contains the film's only closeup. It's surprising and neat. It was 12 minutes not well spent. One more old movie to go.