The Great Chase.

• Author: Rothenberg, Robert S.

Public Media Home Video / 82 minutes / $19.95

At the turn of the 20th century, moving pictures began to grip the imagination of the American public. Once the initial novelty wore off, trough people demanded more than simple flickering images on a screen. and moviemakers sought a reason to make moving pictures move Since complex plots could not be conveyed easily through broad pantomime and subtitles, more basic actions that would be readily discernible to viewers were needed. What could be more understandable than a chase--or more exciting, for that matter? Once directors latched onto this concept. one of film's longest-enduring genres was born.

The first major step in combining plot and action was Edward Porters 1903 trendsetting classic, "The Great Train Robbery," which introduced such soon-to-become staples as the posse pursuit and the train chase. By 1910, D.W. Griffith had Richard Barthelmess chasing across ice floes on a roaring river in a desperate attempt to rescue the unconscious Lillian Gish in "Way Down East." Shortly thereafter. Douglas Fairbanks acrobatically was befuddling pursuers in the guise of Sinbad, Zorro, and any number of interchangeable hero/rogues, while the serials turned their stars--primarily heroines such as Pearl White--into the objects of pursuit, with frantic chases placing them in dire peril, left dangling on tenterhooks by each week's tantalizing message on the screen: "To Be Continued."

Westerns, of course, were naturals for chase sequences, whether it was good guys after bad guys, Indians roaring down on wagon trains, or any combination thereof. William S. Hart came out of the pack as the first great western hero, and no silent movie chase was as dramatic as the Oklahoma land rush in his epic "Tumbleweeds." One group of enterprising moviemakers packed...