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Life of a Cowboy

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Life of a Cowboy (1906)
Bad guys making an Englishman "dance" by shooting at his feet
Directed byEdwin S. Porter
CinematographyEdwin S. Porter
Distributed byEdison Manufacturing Company
Release date
  • June 1906(1906-06)
Running time
17 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguagesSilent filmwith
English intertitles

Life of a Cowboyis a 1906 American shortsilentWestern filmproduced byEdison Manufacturing Companyand directed byEdwin S. Porter.[1]

Plot

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Outlaws attacking a stagecoach

The film opens in asalooncalled the "Big Horn". An oldIndianstaggers in but the bartender refuses to serve him. A "bad guy"walks in and orders a drink, and tries to give it to the Indian, but an Indian girl knocks away the glass. The bad guy threatens her but the"good guy"steps in to protect her, then runs the bad guy out of the saloon.

Next, an Englishman and his friends come in for a drink. Some bad guycowboysride into the saloon on theirhorsesand start firing their gun. Several fire at the feet of the Englishman to make him "dance" (a similar scene takes place inThe Great Train Robbery). The next scene shows the Englishman and his friends coming out of astagecoach;one of the friends is pushed to the ground and flogged with a saddle. Then there is a scene of a cowboy performinglassotricks and playfully roping first theEnglishman,then a woman on horseback.

The party, having finished their visit, re-enters the stagecoach and rides away. One of the bad guys sees them leave, then rounds up some Indians to chase the stagecoach. They catch up to the stagecoach and capture a pretty girl passenger. The stage driver escapes and goes to find the good guy. When the good guy finds out what happened, he rounds up a posse and goes off to save the girl. The posse gives chase to the Indians, killing several in the process, and the girl is rescued. The last scene shows the good guy and the girl sitting arm-in-arm. The bad guy sneaks up on him and tries to kill him, but the Indian girl from the first scene shoots the bad guy first, then kneels down at the feet of the good guy, in gratitude for saving her.[1]

Analysis

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The film's duration is 17 minutes, which was long for the time. Porter considered it "the first Western". Today,The Great Train Robberyis widely accepted as the first Western, but at the time it was made,The Great Train Robbery(which Porter also directed) was considered a "crime film" rather than a Western.[2]

Life of a Cowboycontains many Western "tropes"such as lassoing, chases on horseback, robbery of a stagecoach, kidnapping and rescuing of" the girl ", shooting at the feet to make a person" dance ", white hats for good guys and black hats for bad guys, and Indians as villains. The film suffers from a confusing plot line, exacerbated by the lack of intertitles.[1]

See also

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References

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  1. ^abc"Life of a Cowboy, at Century Film Project".centuryfilmproject.org.Century Film Project. 4 July 2019.Retrieved15 April2022.
  2. ^Musser, Charles (1990).The Emergence of Cinema: the American Screen to 1907.Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press.
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