''The Iron Horse'' is a 1924 American silent

Western film The Western is a genre set in the American frontier and commonly associated with folk tales of the Western United States, particularly the Southwestern United States, as well as Northern Mexico and Western Canada. It is commonly referred ...

directed by

John Ford John Martin Feeney (February 1, 1894 – August 31, 1973), known professionally as John Ford, was an American film director and naval officer. He is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers of his generation. He ...

and produced by

Fox Film The Fox Film Corporation (also known as Fox Studios) was an American Independent film production studio formed by William Fox (1879–1952) in 1915, by combining his earlier Greater New York Film Rental Company and Box Office Attractions Film C ...

. It was a major milestone in Ford's career, and his lifelong connection to the western film genre. It was Ford's first major film, in part because the hastily planned production went over budget, as Fox was making a hurried response to the success of another studio's western. In 2011, this film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...

and selected for preservation in the

National Film Registry The National Film Registry (NFR) is the United States National Film Preservation Board's (NFPB) collection of films selected for preservation, each selected for its historical, cultural and aesthetic contributions since the NFPB’s inception i ...

Plot

The film is about the construction of the American

first transcontinental railroad North America's first transcontinental railroad (known originally as the "Pacific Railroad" and later as the " Overland Route") was a continuous railroad line constructed between 1863 and 1869 that connected the existing eastern U.S. rail netwo ...

. It depicts Irish, Italian, and Chinese immigrants, as well as African Americans, as the men who did the backbreaking work that made this feat possible. The primary villain is an unscrupulous businessman who masquerades as a renegade

Cheyenne The Cheyenne ( ) are an Indigenous people of the Great Plains. Their Cheyenne language belongs to the Algonquian language family. Today, the Cheyenne people are split into two federally recognized nations: the Southern Cheyenne, who are enroll ...

. It culminates with the scene of driving of the

golden spike The golden spike (also known as The Last Spike) is the ceremonial 17.6-karat gold final spike driven by Leland Stanford to join the rails of the first transcontinental railroad across the United States connecting the Central Pacific Railroad ...

Promontory Summit Promontory is an area of high ground in Box Elder County, Utah, United States, 32 mi (51 km) west of Brigham City and 66 mi (106 km) northwest of Salt Lake City. Rising to an elevation of 4,902 feet (1,494 m) above sea ...

on May 10, 1869.

Cast

Production

Among the extras used in the Central Pacific sequences were several Chinese men playing

coolies A coolie (also spelled koelie, kuli, khuli, khulie, cooli, cooly, or quli) is a term for a low-wage labourer, typically of South Asian or East Asian descent. The word ''coolie'' was first popularized in the 16th century by European traders acros ...

who worked on the railroad. They were in fact retired Central Pacific Railroad employees who had helped build the first transcontinental railroad through the Sierras, who came out to participate in the filming as a lark. There is a note in the title before this scene that the two original locomotives from the 1869 event are used in the film, although this is false - both engines ( Union Pacific No. 119 and

Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the List of Solar System objects by size, largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined, but ...

) were scrapped before 1910.

Legacy

In December 2011, ''The Iron Horse'' was selected for inclusion in the Library of Congress' National Film Registry. In choosing the film, the Registry said that ''The Iron Horse'' "introduced to American and world audiences a reverential, elegiac mythology that has influenced many subsequent Westerns." The film's importance was recognized by the

American Film Institute The American Film Institute (AFI) is an American nonprofit film organization that educates filmmakers and honors the heritage of the motion picture arts in the United States. AFI is supported by private funding and public membership fees. Leade ...

in the 2008

AFI's 10 Top 10 ''AFI's 10 Top 10'' honors the ten greatest American films in ten classic film genres. Presented by the American Film Institute (AFI), the lists were unveiled on a television special broadcast by CBS on June 17, 2008. In the special, various acto ...

, where it was nominated in the Western category.

Critical reception

The film has a 78% rating in

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

Home media

The film was released on DVD in America in its full-length US version (accompanied by the truncated UK version). A 2011 release of ''The Iron Horse'' on DVD in the UK included both the US and International/UK versions of the picture, and a half-hour video-essay about the film by author and critic Tag Gallagher. The international version includes some variant shots and uses different names for some supporting characters; it also carries a dedication to the British railway engineer

George Stephenson George Stephenson (9 June 1781 – 12 August 1848) was a British civil engineer and mechanical engineer. Renowned as the "Father of Railways", Stephenson was considered by the Victorians a great example of diligent application and thirst for ...

.''The Iron Horse'': 2011 DVD edition, The Masters of Cinema Series. Near the end of the film, it is stated that the actual "Jupiter" and "UP 116" were used in the scene. Besides incorrectly identifying the "UP 119" as the "UP 116", both engines had been scrapped 21 and 15 years earlier. Of interest, however, what appears to be the Central Pacific's "C.P. Huntington", now on display in Sacramento, California, is being manhandled up a steep grade on a sledge made of logs.

Novelization

Starting in the early 1920s the publishing house Grosset and Dunlap crafted a deal with the prominent Hollywood studios to issue novelizations of their major, original releases and among those was ''The Iron Horse'' (1924, 329pp). The author was Edwin C. Hill, then a journalist, who would become a prominent radio broadcaster, best remembered for a show called '' The Human Side of the News''.

References

External links

Iron Horse'' essay by David Kiehn
on the National Film Registry website * *

at acinemahistory.com
''The Iron Horse''
on Amazon Prime Video {{DEFAULTSORT:Iron Horse, The 1924 films 1924 Western (genre) films American black-and-white films Films directed by John Ford Fox Film films United States National Film Registry films Silent American Western (genre) films 1920s American films Films with screenplays by John Russell (screenwriter) Rail transport films First transcontinental railroad Films set in 1869 Films set in Utah 1920s English-language films