Person
Edwin S. Porter
Connellsville, Pennsylvania, USA
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 Pla…
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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).
Filmography
Movies and shows, newest first
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2026
Film voor Ben
Movie Original Film Writer
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1982
Before the Nickelodeon: The Cinema of Edwin S. Porter
Movie Himself (archive footage) (uncredited)
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1915
The Prince and the Pauper
Movie Director
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1915
Bella Donna
Movie Director
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1915
Zaza
Movie Director
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1915
The White Pearl
Movie Director
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1915
Sold
Movie Director
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1915
The Eternal City
Movie Director
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1915
When We Were Twenty-One
Movie Director
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1915
Niobe
Movie Director
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1915
The Morals of Marcus
Movie Director
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1914
The Crucible
Movie Director
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1914
Such a Little Queen
Movie Director
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1914
Tess of the Storm Country
Movie Director
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1914
A Good Little Devil
Movie Director
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1914
Hearts Adrift
Movie Director
More credits
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1913
The Count of Monte Cristo
Movie Director
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1913
His Neighbor's Wife
Movie Director
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1913
In the Bishop's Carriage
Movie Director
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1913
The Prisoner of Zenda
Movie Director
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1911
The Price
Movie Director
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1911
Lost Illusions
Movie Writer
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1911
The Lighthouse by the Sea
Movie Director
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1911
Sherlock Holmes, Jr.
Movie Director
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1911
On the Brink
Movie Director
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1911
A Heroine of '76
Movie Director
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1910
His Mother's Thanksgiving
Movie Director
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1910
Sunshine Sue
Movie Producer
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1910
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Movie Director
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1910
The Attack on the Mill
Movie Director
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1910
Russia, the Land of Oppression
Movie Director
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1910
A Child of the Ghetto
Movie Producer
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1909
On the Western Frontier
Movie Director
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1909
The Cord of Life
Movie Producer
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1909
The Colored Stenographer
Movie Director
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1908
Miss Sherlock Holmes
Movie Director
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1908
She
Movie Director
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1908
The Gentleman Burglar
Movie Camera Operator
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1908
Nero and the Burning of Rome
Movie Cinematography
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1908
Tale the Autumn Leaves Told
Movie Director
