10 Movies You Didn’t Know Were Responsible For Game-Changing Innovations

The observant will notice that many of film's game changing innovations came in very quick succession, this is due to how successful films were and how fast the technology spread. One early movie which features a cavalcade of firsts is Edwin S. Porter's 1903 film The Great Train Robbery.

Based on a real train robbery committed by The Sundance Kid and Butch Cassidy, the great train robbery is the first Western and the first action film. The film is also one of the first to use cross-cutting, a technique used to show to separate scenes happening simultaneously as well as on location shooting.

But one can't discuss The Great Train Robbery without also discussing the iconic last (or first, it was used either/or) shot. A man stares directly at the camera and fires his gun. The logic of this scene is a mystery but you could see it as the first fourth wall break in cinema.

There's also an urban myth that when the man fires into the crowd the first audiences either ducked, panicked or even fired back, but there is little evidence to support this claim, probably no one wanted to admit to being that stupid.