The Great Train Robbery

Twelve minutes that rewrote the rules. Edwin S. Porter took the camera out of the studio and into the real world — onto moving trains, across open landscapes, into actual gunfights — and created the template for every action film that followed. Bandits hold up a telegraph operator, rob a train, and flee into the woods; a posse gives chase. The storytelling is breathlessly efficient, cutting between parallel actions in a way no one had attempted before. And that final shot — a bandit firing point-blank at the audience — reportedly sent early viewers diving out of their seats. This is where narrative cinema found its pulse.