AFI's Greatest American Films List
June 21, 2007
On Wednesday the AFI ran it’s annual three-hour clip heavy broadcast of a particular “best of” list, this time an update of the 100 Greatest American Films that first aired ten years ago. The list is still heavy with important and groundbreaking films, but it’s still inconsistent, and for every good choice, there is an equally baffling pick and/or omission. Here are a few of my likes and dislikes about this latest list.
· “Citizen Kane” is still considered the greatest film of all time, which it undoubtedly is, but how does a filmmaker (Orson Welles) rank the greatest film of all time and be virtually ignored after that? Where is “Touch of Evil” or “The Magnificent Ambersons” on this list, and for that matter, even though it’s completely British, “The Third Man” (by Carol Reed), which was present ten years ago but is inexplicably absent this year? Historians know how important, and varied, Orson Welles’ career was, but to look at the AFI list you’d think he made one film at the age of 25, the most impressive cinematic feast of all time, and then retired.
· This list, just like the earlier list, has a penchant for choosing the first, or most important, film of a genre, series, or era rather than the film that artistically and aesthetically is better. Some examples: Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” makes the list this year, a worthy choice, but most of us agree that it’s the third, “The Return of the King” that is the summation of the series’ considerable wonders, not “The Fellowship of the Ring” (#50), which was chosen as representative. Similarly, Pixar certainly deserves a place on this list, but instead of actually picking Pixar’s best film (either “Finding Nemo”, “Toy Story 2”, or “The Incredibles”), the AFI simply picked the first, “Toy Story” (#99), not because it’s the greatest computer animated film of all time, but because it was the beginning. The same can be said for old school Disney, which places “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves” (#34), the first of the classic features, but nowhere to be seen are the even better “Pinocchio” (Disney’s masterpiece), “Bambi”, or “Dumbo”. “Star Wars” (#13) still rates as the greatest Sci-Fi film of all time by the AFI, and I still love it, but my taste still runs to the darker “Empire Strikes Back”, the best of the series, nowhere to be seen on the list. And finally, “Easy Rider” (#84) may have ushered in the New Wave of the late sixties and seventies, but it’s kind of dated today, much more worthy of that era would be films like “Five Easy Pieces”, “Coming Home”, “Mean Streets” (still my personal choice over “Taxi Driver”), “The Last Detail”, “Woodstock” (though I think documentaries, apparently, are disallowed), “Shampoo”, and “McCabe and Mrs. Miller”, a glaring omission from this most potent modern period.
· Everybody loves “The Godfather” (#2), it’s a masterpiece and one of the most influential films ever made, but when will the AFI realize that it’s “The Godfather Part II” (#32) that is the better of Coppola’s great series? Critics for years have been arguing in favor of ‘Part II’ as the more complex of the films, maybe in ten years the AFI will close the gap a little, if not in total, than at least make ‘Part II’ a top ten candidate, where it rightfully deserves to be.
· There were 23 films that made the list this year that didn’t make it ten years ago, some of them definitely deserving, such as “The General” (#18), “Sunrise” (#82), “Do the Right Thing” (#96), “Intolerance” (#49), and “Nashville” (#59), but some that feel out of place, and in my opinion unworthy, like “Sophie’s Choice” (#91), “Titanic” (#83), “Spartacus” (#81; who still watches “Spartacus”?), “The Sixth Sense” (#89), “Toy Story” (#99), and “Blade Runner” (#97), a cool film by all means, but a strange choice considering how incomplete Ridley Scott’s vision of P.K. Dick’s novel was.
· All “best of” lists are debatable, and exactly who is voting, and how, is always a question of concern, so complaining about omissions is almost futile, because who do you blame, the one in 1,500 who liked Chaplain over Lloyd, and this time around thought “Rebel Without a Cause” didn’t deserve mention, but “The Sixth Sense” did? There are countless films that could (should) be on this list, and naming each one is counterproductive (unless you compile your own 100 list, which I did years ago, a list that needs it’s own retooling), but of the films that peeked ten years ago, and have since dropped off, ‘Rebel’ (previously #59) is by far the biggest omission, with “Fargo” (previously #84), “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (previously #64), and “From Here to Eternity” (previously #52) close behind.
· For a board made up primarily of old timers, the silent era doesn’t seem to warrant much merit. Of course films like “City Lights”, “The General”, “Sunrise”, and “Intolerance” are worthy (actually “Sunrise” deserves a top 20 slot), but any list of the greatest films of all time should place one of the following for good standing: “Greed”, “The Crowd”, “The Merry Widow”, “The Wind”, “Safety Last”, “The Kid Brother”, and “The Big Parade”, a film that was once considered the greatest American film of all time, but is now virtually forgotten except by scholars and buffs.
· It was great to see John Ford’s “The Searchers” jump a whopping 84 places to land at number 12, and Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” jump 52 spots to number 9 (finally acknowledging that it is his most revered film, though I’ve always argued “Read Window” (#48 first), but I was disappointed to see other films that placed low on the list last time, like “Pulp Fiction” (#95 then, #94 now) and “Goodfellas” (#94 then, #92 now) remain at the bottom of the pack. I guess it’s an honor just to make the list, but certainly “Pulp Fiction”, the most important film of the past twenty years, and arguably the best, deserves a ranking in the top thirty.
· An inconsistency I noticed this year is the British factor, as in, what constitutes a British film and what constitutes an American film. I’ve always held that “Lawrence of Arabia” (#7) and “The Bridge on the River Kwai” (#36) were British, made by the British David Lean on location, with studio work done out of England, but both of them place high on the American list (as well as the BFI list). And what about the masterpiece “The Third Man”, a film that placed #57 ten years ago (and number one on the BFI list), but this year didn’t make the cut. Was it because they realized that it was mostly an English film, despite the presence of American stars Orson Welles and Joseph Cotton, or was it because, somehow, they just figured it wasn’t as good as, say, “Sophie’s Choice” or “Ben-Hur” (#100)? If “Lawrence of Arabia” can place number seven in America and number five in England, why can’t England’s number one merit even a mention on the American list? This is just one of the reasons a list like this is so maddening.
· Genre works didn’t fare too well this year, with horror, Sci-Fi, and Film Noir placing very few except the noted famous films, like “Star Wars”, “Double Indemnity” (#29), and “Bonnie and Clyde” (#42), all staples of previous lists. My personal preference would be to see such films as “The Day the Earth Stood Still”, “Bride of Frankenstein”, “The Public Enemy”, Howard Hawkes’ “Scarface”, “The Naked City”, “Sweet Smell of Success”, “Night of the Hunter”, “The Big Sleep”, “The Matrix”, “Rosemary’s Baby”, “Gun Crazy”, and “Detour” on future lists, but that may be some far reaching wishful thinking.
· Finally, all in all the broadcast was good, the clips are always nice to see, and the talking heads are generally easy to listen to, but the list needs work, and frankly, the only was I see it working to perfection is if they let each member (who may not even want to spend the time) rank his or her own 100 just from their own experience, with no rules, regulations, or a set specific number of films to choose from (I believe the number this year was a meager 400). What happens if I want to list something like “Back to the Future”, “Die Hard”, or “Terminator 2” on my list, but there’s no check for it on the ballot, does that mean it’s not one of the 100 greatest movies of all time? I know it may be extensive work culling a list of 100 from thousands of random picks, but if this list is to be as important as the AFI thinks it is, it may be the only solution. In ten years, it would be that much more refreshing to see “Being John Malkovich”, “Sideways”, and “L.A. Confidential” in place of “Titanic”, “The Sixth Sense”, and “Blade Runner”.
by Adam Suraf