I really like lists. I’ve labored at ScreenCrush for greater than a decade now, and I can’t even think about the variety of lists I’ve written in that point. Dozens, simply. Tons of, doubtlessly. 1000’s, probably?
However I’ve by no means actually thought of why I like lists a lot. I grew up obsessively watching Siskel & Ebert, which devoted annual episodes to the hosts’ lists of the very best and worst movies of the yr. These episodes have been all the time appointment viewing, even when Roger Ebert apparently hated doing them. In 2012, he stated lists “had worth solely within the minds of function editors fretting that their film critics had an excessive amount of free time” and known as them a “diabolical time-waster designed to spice up a web page’s web page visits.” (Which, uh, truthful.)
That may clarify why solely Gene Siskel contributed to the only most essential checklist of my teenage years: The American Movie Institute’s 100 Years, 100 Motion pictures. First introduced in 1998, the AFI Prime 100 was created to honor 100 years of cinema and 30 years of the American Movie Institute. In its personal phrases, the AFI recruited 1500 “leaders in entrance of and behind the digital camera, filmmakers, executives, exhibitors, journalists, historians, in addition to notable Individuals” to vote for the titles they thought of “the 100 best American films of all time.”
Voters got a listing from the AFI of 400 nominated movies, and requested to evaluate them primarily based on “reputation over time, vital and award recognition, artistic and technical achievement, historic significance, and cultural affect.” Their high 100 was revealed on a star-studded, three-hour TV particular that aired on CBS, hosted by Jodie Foster, Richard Gere, and Sally Area. The very best of the very best, based on voters, was Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane.
The TV broadcast of the AFI Prime 100 is sort of the doc of the late Nineteen Nineties. It consists of Mel Brooks singing the praises of the unique Frankenstein, and Chevy Chase (in sun shades!) explaining Charlie Chaplin’s significance to the world of bodily comedy. Samuel L. Jackson talks about D.W. Griffith’s notoriously racist however massively influential silent function The Beginning of a Nation, and Dustin Hoffman will get choked up as he explains how a lot his position in Tootsie meant to him.
The speaking heads embrace a wild array of actors, administrators, and celebrities starting from Invoice Clinton to Woody Allen to Sarah Ferguson to Donald Trump, who joked on the printed about watching King Kong for the buildings, not the large ape.
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The 100 Years, 100 Motion pictures TV particular was a success on CBS; it was later broadcast in prolonged type on TNT. For the subsequent 11 years, the AFI constructed on that success with new annual rankings. In 1999, they listed the 100 best film stars (Humphrey Bogart was chosen because the #1 actor; Katharine Hepburn topped the checklist of actresses). In 2004, they revealed the 100 best film songs. (“Over the Rainbow” from The Wizard of Oz reigned supreme in that one.)
In 2007, they up to date the unique Prime 100 after a brand new spherical of voting. Citizen Kane remained primary, however the general order of titles was fairly totally different. 23 new movies joined the Prime 100, like Sidney Lumet’s 12 Offended Males and Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, whereas 23 others have been eliminated, together with Vicente Minnelli’s An American in Paris and Kevin Costner’s Dances With Wolves.
After the up to date Prime 100, the AFI revealed yet one more annual checklist — technically 10 shorter lists of 10 nice movies in genres like animation, gangster, and sci-fi. However there was by no means a twentieth anniversary replace to the unique Prime 100. There have been no lists of any form, the truth is.
The American Movie Institute nonetheless exists, and nonetheless does essential work operating a conservatory and its annual AFI Fest, amongst different initiatives. However they stopped producing annual lists in 2008. Those they created previously stay prominently featured on the entrance web page of AFI’s web site, however they haven’t been up to date in virtually 20 years.
From what I can collect on-line, the annual checklist custom largely ended as a result of the CBS broadcasts stopped garnering the massive rankings. It additionally most likely didn’t assist that the lists have been typically fairly controversial. In June of 1998, Roger Ebert answered a reader letter about the AFI Prime 100, and its complicated inclusion of the British movie The Third Man in a rating of the good American films, by dismissing the entire challenge out of hand.
“The complete AFI checklist has been a fiasco,” Ebert declared, including that it was “an arbitrary choice of 100 titles from an equally arbitrary choice of 400 titles, chosen by an arbitrary group of voters, lots of whom have unhealthy style and are uninformed about movie historical past.” He instructed the boondoggle might have been known as “The 100 Biggest Comparatively Current Well-liked Studio Movies Principally About White Males.”
Sure, the AFI Prime 100 checklist is flawed. (The checklist of individuals known as upon to speak about it on the CBS TV particular is very flawed.) The published is exasperating at instances. To be able to cram all 100 movies into a three-hour program, a lot of the honored titles obtained solely a minute or two of display screen time. Many A-list stars seem — no surprise the present bought massive rankings — however virtually no historians or critics. Consequently, the “consultants” featured onscreen provide little historic context or technical insights. Who offers a crap what Tommy Larsorda thought of Patton?
However in some methods, these flaws make the checklist extra precious as a time capsule, capturing not solely what folks considered canonical American cinema within the late Nineteen Nineties, but additionally whose opinions and voices have been valued within the evaluation of canonical American cinema on the time. (“Tommy Lasorda, why is F.W. Murnau’s Dawn: A Track of Two People one of many true masterpieces of the silent period?”)
The adjustments to the voters and to the ultimate checklist within the up to date high 100 9 years later mirror that — and, the truth is, Ebert himself provided a much more beneficiant evaluation of the AFI’s rating in 2007. “The tv particular makes cash for the American Movie Institute, which is a noble and helpful establishment,” he famous. “And a few child someplace is gonna hire Citizen Kane and have the identical sort of epiphany I had once I first noticed it as an adolescent.”
Precisely. I’d already watched Citizen Kane by the point that first AFI Prime 100 debuted in 1998 (I used to be one of many dorkiest youngsters who ever lived, looking back I’m astonished I didn’t put on suspenders and a pocket protector to high school), however the remainder of the checklist turned my first cinematic bible. Earlier than each go to to the video retailer, I’d seek the advice of it, then attempt to choose off a title or two.
I by no means made it via the entire Prime 100 — to this present day, I nonetheless want to look at George Stevens’ A Place within the Solar — however AFI launched me, and numerous budding cinephiles of my era, to so many nice films. They additionally, I notice now, launched me to the enjoyment of lists, and of utilizing them as guides via the world of movie.
The AFI Prime 100 fulfilled a necessity that was not being met in these very early days of the web. There merely wasn’t the abundance of film lists and assets like there at the moment are. However as somebody who makes and reads numerous lists I can let you know with confidence: Most on-line lists suck. I don’t imply in the “How might u go away off [insert favorite movie] your gap checklist sucks” form of inconsiderate web remark means. I imply the overwhelming majority are made as quick as potential by as few folks as potential (or by no folks, thanks ChatGPT). They contain virtually no analysis, they usually largely regurgitate the identical handfuls of titles time and again. As an alternative of a canon, you get an echo chamber.
Say what you’ll in regards to the AFI’s ultimate picks, however that’s not how their checklist was made. They polled 1500 folks! They compiled their picks right into a handsomely produced tv particular! The picks might need been imperfect. (The speaking heads have been positively imperfect.) However they produced a listing that individuals talked about and debated and which completely superior the reason behind historic movie schooling.
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That’s why the AFI must revive the Prime 100 custom. Not yearly; that was overkill. However as soon as a decade can be so helpful, like an American cousin to Sight & Sound’s authoritative “Biggest Movies of All Time” checklist, which even Roger Ebert revered sufficient to vote in each ten years. (In 2012, his private poll included Apocalypse Now, La Dolce Vita, and The Tree of Life.) The up to date AFI checklist might then be promoted on Letterboxd, it may very well be mentioned on TikTok. A brand new particular might air on TCM. The lists’ decisions may very well be screened at repertory theaters, and hyped on streamers like Netflix or the Criterion Channel.
Certain, you may nonetheless discover the previous AFI checklist; it’s most likely rather a lot simpler to look at its picks now than it was once I tried to do it as an adolescent counting on his native Blockbuster. (You haven’t recognized true disgrace till an exhausted staffer in a blue and yellow polo shirt has given you a withering loss of life stare after you requested them to verify in the event that they carry The Finest Years of Our Lives … and The Philadelphia Story … and All Quiet on the Western Entrance … oh and likewise Physician Zhivago.)
However movie historical past didn’t finish in 2001. That was the yr of the latest movie��included in AFI’s up to date Prime 100, Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Consider all the fashionable masterpieces that deserve to be thought of for that authoritative checklist, and the brand new era of potential filmgoers that may very well be incepted with the love of previous films.
Come to consider it: 2028 would mark the thirtieth anniversary of that authentic AFI checklist, an ideal event for its return. That timeline would additionally present loads of time to assemble one other 1500 leaders in entrance of and behind the digital camera, filmmakers, executives, exhibitors, journalists, historians, in addition to notable Individuals. Tommy Lasorda sadly handed away in 2021, however I’d be comfortable to contribute on his behalf. And I wager numerous others who owe a few of their movie schooling to the AFI Prime 100 can be too.
Motion pictures That Have been Deserted Throughout Manufacturing and By no means Completed
These films have been began however by no means accomplished or launched for a wide range of causes.
