Thursday, January 15, 2015

The Great Train Robbery again

TCM is running a night of movies looking at train robberies. The night begins and ends with The Great Train Robbery, although the two movies are completely different. First up at 8:00 PM is the 1978 film, also known as The First Great Train Robbery, which deals with a plot to rob a train full of gold in 1855 England. Sean Connery leads the plot. Sean Connery plays the ringleader; Donald Sutherland a partner in crime, and Lesley Ann Down plays Connery's girlfriend.

The night concludes at 5:15 AM tomorrow with the 1903 version of The Great Train Robbery. This is an entirely different movie from the Sean Connery film, set in the American west and dealing with three guys who rob a train full of passengers. This one, being from 1903, is in the public domain, and that means there are quite a few versions up on Youtube. Several of them call themselves the full version, even though the videos are a couple of minutes apart in running time. TCM lists the film as running 11 minutes; I have no idea how many seconds above or below that the TCM print actually runs. If you miss TCM's running, I've included one of the prints on Youtube below:



I'll admit to not having watched this particular print before embedding it, so I'm not certain how much this differs from the TCM print in terms of a score or frame rate or anything missing.

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