A Railway Tragedy (1904) User Reviews (4)

Beware of Mustached Men!

[boblipton · 5/10 · 17 July 2018]

This film in six scenes has a woman preparing to take a train while a man, unknown to her, watches her. In the train, they are in the same compartment. When she falls asleep, he rifles her purse. She wakes and accuses him and he throws her off the train.

Other than its distributor (Gaumont British) there are no known credits for this short film, which uses simple camera set-ups to tell its paranoid story. Like other British films of the era, it is thoroughly middle-class, warning respectable women to be on their guard at all times. Evil men men will steal your money and try to kill you! The only clue you might have is that they wear their mustaches a little long!

Excuse me while I go trim my mustache.

British crime film from the early days of cinema

[Leofwine_draca · 6/10 · 4 February 2017]

A RAILWAY TRAGEDY is a short British film from 1904 that must have been like watching a Penny Dreadful for audiences at the time. I suppose it holds the distinction for being one of the first crime films made in this country. At just five minutes in length it doesn't have much time other than to tell an anecdotal story, but it's surprising at how much content it does contain.

The tale begins on a railway platform with a woman being spied on by a suspicious character in a straw boater. The action moves to a train carriage en route in which the villain makes his plan known, but there's a shocking twist in story and then a conclusion of sorts. This is nothing more than a genteel curiosity piece when viewed today, but I imagine earlier audiences would have been appropriately shocked and terrified by what they witnessed.

Resourcefully Builds Up Some Good Suspense

[Snow Leopard · 4 February 2005]

The most noticeable thing about this short drama is the way that it resourcefully builds up the suspense and the anticipation of danger in the earlier sequences. The technical side in itself is pretty straightforward, but the scenario is well-conceived, and for the most part the performers carry it off pretty well.

The basic story, with a woman in danger from a strange man on a train, is quite similar to the stories in many other features in the first decade of the 20th century. But this is better from most, due to the way that the movie patiently sets things up in a way that creates suspense, rather than jumping right into tumultuous action.

The early scenes show the woman going about her own affairs, unaware that the man is watching her all the while. The camera shots are composed carefully enough so that you can pick up what is happening if you watch closely, and it allows the audience to sense the danger before the character does - a technique that is now thoroughly familiar in crime and horror movies, but it shows some resourcefulness for a film-maker to have done this deliberately and carefully in 1904.

Most of the rest is straightforward - a couple of times there is a slight shifting of the camera to take in more of the action, but otherwise there are few surprises in the events or in the technique - but the effective use of technique in its earlier scenes is enough to make it stand out for its time.

Don't be Caught Napping!

[AnnieLola · 9/10 · 29 November 2012]

This is a pretty good piece of early suspense movie-making, even if there are no closeups. A British Gaumont production, it was released in the US by Biograph. The Villain of the piece, a wrong 'un if ever there was one, loiters by the railway station till he spots a likely victim. He trails her, sees that she'll be alone in a compartment, then follows her onto the train. The dear lady was either exhausted or is a narcoleptic, for she's sound asleep when Mr. Bad hops aboard a few seconds after her. Once the train is in motion, he goes into action. After assuring himself that she's really dead to the world, he snakes her purse off her lap and extracts a nice wad of banknotes, then replaces it-- all without awakening her. Then he removes his false mustache and sits innocently reading his paper. In a moment, the lady wakes up and immediately notices her empty purse, raising such a fuss that the Villain then drops all pretense of innocence and manhandles her, finally shoving her off the train, the brute! Passersby pull her from the adjacent tracks just in time to save her from certain death under the wheels of another train. The hue and cry is raised, and the Villain is chased down and apprehended when he alights from the train, though he brandishes a gun and puts up a struggle. As a career criminal the guy really didn't have much on the ball, I must say. For 1904 this is a quite watchable little crime drama, even if the plot (as well as the Villain!) is simple and obvious.