A Railway Tragedy
About A Railway Tragedy
A woman leaves a hansom at a station while a man watches. She boards a compartment; he gets in just before the train starts. She sleeps, and he lifts a thick wad of banknotes from her purse. When she wakes and tries to search him, he opens the door and throws her onto the line. Two men carry her clear of an oncoming train. At the next station she is waiting. He runs, knocks her down, and offers money to the men who stop him. They carry him off.
More about A Railway Tragedy
L. Gaumont and Company, the British firm, produced and distributed the short. American Mutoscope and Biograph released it in the United States and copyrighted it on 10 October 1904. Five of the six shots are wide views on location. The compartment is a built set: when the door opens, the landscape outside does not move.
Themes
Background
Compartment coaches kept strangers shut in together for the length of a run. This short stages a purse theft that becomes an attempt to throw the woman from the moving train.
Making
The reel mixes a real train arrival and departure with the staged robbery. Director and actors are not named on the Biograph copyright record or in Niver's paper-print catalogue.
Look
Six setups: a pan from a hansom into the station, the platform as the train comes in, a medium shot inside a built compartment, the track, and two angles on the arrest platform.
Music
Silent.
Preservation
A 35mm paper positive survives in the Library of Congress paper-print collection, from the Biograph copyright deposit.
Notes
- Kemp R. Niver catalogs the Biograph paper print in Early Motion Pictures, Library of Congress, 1985, page 267.
- The attack is one medium shot. The other five setups are wide: street and cab, two stations, the track, and the arrest.
- A jump cut on the track lets two men lift the woman clear before a train arrives.
- The thief, once grabbed, tries to buy his way off the platform. The station master joins the men who hold him.
- Nanna Verhoeff and Richard Abel both use the film when they write about crime inside European compartment coaches.
Scenes
- The woman sleeps, the book falls, and the man takes the banknotes out of her purse and puts the purse back on her knees.
- She tries to search him. He opens the compartment door and throws her out.
- On the next platform he offers money to the men holding him, and they carry him away.
Also available
- Internet Archive (silent-a-railway-tragedy)
- Library of Congress paper-print collection