Edwin S. Porter
Directing
Born 1870-04-21
Died 1941-04-30
Connellsville, Pennsylvania, USA
196 credits
Read biography
Edwin Stanton Porter was an American film pioneer, most famous as a producer, director, studio manager and cinematographer with the Edison Manufacturing Company and the Famous Players Film Company. Influenced by both the "Brighton school" and the story films of Georges Méliès, Porter went on to make important shorts such as Life of an American Fireman (1903) and The Great Train Robbery (1903). In them, he helped to develop the modern concept of continuity editing, paving the way for D.W. Griffith who would expand on Porter's discovery that the unit of film structure was the shot rather than the scene. Porter, in an attempt to resist the new industrial system born out of the popularity of nickelodeons, left Edison in 1909 to form his own production company which he eventually sold in 1912.
Porter remains an enigmatic figure in motion picture history. Though his significance as director of The Great Train Robbery and other innovative early films is undeniable, he rarely repeated an innovation after he had used it successfully, never developed a consistent directorial style, and in later years never protested when others rediscovered his techniques and claimed them as their own. He was a modest, quiet, cautious man who felt uncomfortable working with the famous stars he directed starting in 1912.
He has directed four films that have been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant: Life of an American Fireman (1903), The Great Train Robbery (1903), Dream of a Rarebit Fiend (1906) and Tess of the Storm Country (1914).
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Filmography
— top 60 of 196
Directing
46 credits
The Great Train Robbery
Hearts Adrift
College Chums
Niobe
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Bella Donna
A Good Little Devil
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Faust
Sold
The Night Before Christmas
"Weary Willlie" Kisses the Bride
The Whole Dam Family and the Dam Dog
Laughing Gas
The Prince and the Pauper
The 'Teddy' Bears
A Winter Straw Ride
The House of Cards
His Mother's Thanksgiving
Miss Sherlock Holmes
Rivals
Life of an American Fireman
The Trainer’s Daughter, or A Race for Love
The White Caps
Electrocuting an Elephant
Pan-American Exposition by Night
The Twentieth Century Tramp; or, Happy Hooligan and His Airship
The Count of Monte Cristo
Tess of the Storm Country
Uncle Josh in a Spooky Hotel
The Prisoner of Zenda
The Eternal City
Such a Little Queen
Kansas Saloon Smashers
Dream of a Rarebit Fiend
His Neighbor's Wife
The Old Maid in the Horsecar
The Morals of Marcus
Zaza
The White Pearl
The Kleptomaniac
Treloar and Miss Marshall, Prize Winners at the Physical Culture Show in Madison Square Garden
I.B. Dam and the Whole Dam Family
Terrible Teddy, the Grizzly King
The Lighthouse by the Sea
A Suburbanite's Ingenious Alarm
Other credits
11 credits
The Great Train Robbery
The Gay Shoe Clerk
Hearts Adrift
Parsifal
A Good Little Devil
The Night Before Christmas
A Winter Straw Ride
Cupid’s Pranks
Electrocuting an Elephant
The Count of Monte Cristo
Tess of the Storm Country
Acting
10 credits
Fireside Reminiscences
Dog Factory
Before the Nickelodeon: The Cinema of Edwin S. Porter
Chicago-Michigan Football Game
Life of an American Fireman
President McKinley Taking the Oath
The Twentieth Century Tramp; or, Happy Hooligan and His Airship
The Great Train Robbery
Maniac Chase
Rescued from an Eagle's Nest
Producing
4 credits
Writing
2 credits
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