AFI Does It Again

Once again the American Film Institute has issued a list of top something or others. This year it's the all-time greatest [in the opinion of their panel] movies.

There was a lot of stability at the top -- eight of the top ten films from a decade ago retained that status, although there was some shuffling around. Citizen Kane retained its top spot. I don't disagree with any of them except for Vertigo, which wasn't even Hitchcock's best film.

Only four new films from the past decade made the list -- Titanic, Saving Private Ryan, The Sixth Sense, and Fellowship of the Ring. Funny, I wouldn't have named any of them in my top 100.

And nineteen older films were included for the first time while twenty-three were dropped. Here's the list:

[A]dditions to the list: "The General," "Intolerance," "Nashville," "Sullivan's Travels," "Cabaret," "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" "The Shawshank Redemption," "In The Heat of the Night," "All the President's Men," "Spartacus," "Sunrise," "A Night at the Opera," "12 Angry Men," "Swing Time," "Sophie's Choice," "The Last Picture Show," "Do the Right Thing," "Blade Runner" and "Toy Story."

....

Titles that didn't make the cut this time: "Doctor Zhivago," "Birth of a Nation," "From Here to Eternity," "Amadeus," "All Quiet on the Western Front," "The Third Man," "Fantasia," "Rebel Without a Cause," "Stagecoach," "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," "The Manchurian Candidate," "An American in Paris," "Wuthering Heights," "Dances With Wolves," "Giant," "Fargo," "Mutiny on the Bounty," the 1931 "Frankenstein," "Patton," "The Jazz Singer," "My Fair Lady," "A Place in the Sun" and "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner."

Among the displacements I don't have many major disagreements. Birth of A Nation is a more important film than Intolerance, but racial sensibilities must be served and Griffith is too important to ignore altogether. Shawshank is probably better than Fargo, but it is a close call and the Coens deserve a place somewhere on the list. Blade Runner is better than Close Encounters, by a wide margin, so that's a good choice. It's nice to see Keaton's General be recognized but it was sad to see The Jazz Singer go away -- it's one of the most important films of all time, but it offends racial sensibilities. Is Cabaret really better than My Fair Lady? I think not. The only really outrageous loss was The Third Man, which should be in anyone's top ten.

Well -- that's my opinion, for what it's worth.

Read the Variety article here.