From Leadville to Aspen: A Hold-Up in the Rockies (1906) User Reviews

Born to Track.

[st-shot · 5/10 · 12 March 2008]

With the camera mounted on the moving train From Leadville to Aspen: A Holdup in the Rockies is exactly that: one long tracking shot from one town to the next with said incident in between.

Steaming out of Leadville the camera captures countryside and farmhouse in a nice leisurely fashion. Along the way desperadoes intercept the train mortally wound a train employee and make off with the loot on a hand car. Things really pick up now as the law pursues the outlaws in a buggy. After a brief exchange of gunfire with casualties the outlaws surrender.

This Great Train Robbery clone lacks the pace, editing (there simply is none) and scenery changes of the archetype but it does a fine job of following the pursuit from the camera's commanding position on the moving train in the film's final moments to salvage some of it.

Not for Entertainment, but for re-use

[Thor-Delta · 9/10 · 18 July 2010]

My rating for this movie is based on it's value for use in documentaries and such. It is more interesting than entertaining, and at times, slightly surreal. Much of the movie consists of various scenery seen during a cut-short train ride. There are some nice houses and a stereotypical truss bridge. The "indoor" scenes inside the train are very fake-looking and poorly acted with cheap sets, even for the time. However, though it's not a great film for the time, it still has value. There are countless possibilities to re-use the footage in this movie in many creative ways. It is also reasonably watchable and recommended to those who are interested in "slice-of-life" early silent cinema, despite some of the poor acting in the scripted parts of this film.

Training for reilway personnel

[kekseksa · 15 December 2019]

This is in no sense a clone of The Great Rain Robbery. . It appears to have been made by Mutoscope (Frank Marion, Wallace MCucheon and Billy Bitzer) on commission from the Empire State Railway Company to be shown to railroad crews to give them an idea of what to expect if bandits attempted to hold up their train. The style adopted is entirely appropriate for that purpose and a very interesting use of cinema for practical instructional use. It would seem to be the same film as that listed as Holdup of the Rocky Mountain Express although it is possible that two such films were made. A similar film was made the same year by the new California branch of Mutoscope by Archibald H. Van Guysling , founder of the branch, along with operator Otis M. Gove.