Year: 1905
Director: Edwin Porter
Country: US
Language: N/A
Edwin Porter's The Great Train Robbery (1904) became such a sensation in the United States that everyone and their mother decided they would copy it, "pay homage", steal it, spoof it and/or parody it. Porter's piece of early Cinema was up for grabs, since the legality of ownership of individual films were a bit murky at the time, and everybody wanted a piece of the pie. I reviewed The Bold Bank Robbery, now I'll review The Little Train Robbery.
The Little Train Robbery follows a gang of kids as they hold up a child-sized theme-park train and steal the passengers’ candy.
Opening with a group of children, with an average age of about 10, we see them all in a clubhouse dressed in what is supposed to be Western clothing. While The Great Train Robbery was a 19th Century Period piece, it's hard to say what time this light-hearted spoof falls into. Maybe it's set in present day, right after these kids have come home from seeing Edwin Porter's original crime drama.
The Little Train Robbery is a cute film that shows us crime, no matter how small, doesn't pay. n his final scene, Porter shows us the row of captured bandits, tied together by the wrists and being marched, we assume, to their waiting parents. The lone girl in the picture gets away, perhaps that's a fair ending considering she had to spend all of her screen-time with icky boys.
Strangely enough Edwin Porter decided to parody his own film and does a pretty decent job at it. While this comedy is a bit too dated for my taste, it's still fun to see children playing roles previously owned by adults. I can't give it a rating, but I will recommend it if you're interested in early cinema.
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