If the AFI 100 Greatest Films series added 18 new entries

In 1997, the American Film Institute released a landmark list of the 100 greatest English-language films in the history of cinema. This was what single-handedly turned me on to classic films. Before that point, I had no idea how any of the few older films I had seen were considered against the greats. If you had asked me to guess the top 100 before seeing the list, I might have guessed films like the Vincente Minnelli film Kismet (which is, in fact, considered one of his worst but I liked it plenty), The Pink Panther, Lion King, Back to the Future (which DOES deserve to be on the list), An American Tail, or Cool Runnings.

My own personal experiences aside, the AFI's list deserves acclaim for being balanced, comprehensive, and very much in line with popular opinion, cultural impact and critical standing. In 2007, the AFI rereleased their list with members revoting. Although ten years and a whole batch of new films had passed between lists, only four films released since 1997 made the new cut: Titanic, Saving Private Ryan, Sixth Sense, and Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring. Instead of adding new entries, the AFI spent most of their energy amending the catalogue of films from the original time period, 1996-1996, to correct oversights such as the General, Do the Right Thing, Cabaret, Shawshank Redemption, 12 Angry Men, Blade Runner and 12 others.

So the scenario I'm exploring today is what if the AFI voted to add 18 new films to the original 122 that have been included in either of the lists. This way, no classic films have to be bumped out. I'm only interested in films that overlap with the most recent film to be featured so far which was Lord of the Rings, so no films after 2001 will be considered and since 18 films were added from the existing time period, I'm picking that number.

Here would be my predictions in order of likelihood.

1. The Conversation (1974) dir. Frances Ford Copolla-Starring Gene Hackman as a secretive surveillance official with a crisis of conscience, the film is timeless and especially thematically relevant. It was a Best Picture nominee (competing against Copolla's other masterpiece Godfather II) and widely considered to be on par with Copolla's other films that have landed on the AFI list.

2. Back to the Future (1985) dir. Rob Zemeckis- It's a favorite of mine, but it's very clearly a favorite of a generation and a venerable time capsule of film making in the 80's. The AV Club's Inventory named it the film that defined the 80's in their list of twelve films that defined their decades. Beyond that, it combines the best of several 80's genres (teen movie, scifi, comedy of misadventures) and hits that sweet spot between audience favorite and respectable classic. It's one of the first blockbusters to expand into a trilogy and simultaneously enjoys the status of a cult film today: Something that's endlessly rewatched, celebrated, and dissected.

3. Touch of Evil (1958) dir. Orson Welles-After making Citizen Kane at the ripe age of 26, widely considered to be the best film of all-time, Welles saw his career get severely roadblocked by Hollywood and the bitter vendetta of the Hearst empire and as such, must of his talent as a director was severely dampened by studio influence. Towards the end of his career he made one of his best works: A riff on Othello that was adapted from the short story "Badge of Courage." The film was heavily tampered with by the studio (Universal) and buried in the back half of a double feature with no promotion. In the last few years of the 20th Century as the best of the century lists rolled out Touch of Evil gained popularity just as the director's cut was released. It made lists by Entertainment Weekly, Guinness book of Films, the National Society of Film Critic's A-List and Tim Dirks' website filmsite.org. Beyond that, its a stunning film that I'd count as two or three of my favorites.

4. Alien (1979) dir. Ridley Scott- Like Back to the Future, Alien hits the sweet spot between audience favorite and critical darling and transcends the genre trap of sci-fi. That Sigourney Weaver earned an Oscar nomination for a genre part is a testament of how iconic that character became. It's also fair to say Alien was boundary-pushing. It also ranks #36 on the greatest films of all-time by Time Out Magazine.

5. His Girl Friday (1940) dir. Howard Hawks- Cited by both Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper as one of the ten most glaring omissions of the 1997 list, His Girl Friday is the quintessential screwball comedy that many other romcoms consciously or unconsciously borrowed from. Although another of Hawk's screwball comedies, "Bringing Up Baby", made the list, "His Girl Friday" is a sharper work that showcases Cary Grant as a strong character who can match wits with the best of them which is how he deserves to be remembered. The film might owe its effectiveness to the fact that it was adapted from a film ("The Front Page") in which both leads were men. How's that for gender equality.

6. Big Sleep (1946) dir. Howard Hawks- If I'm not mistaken, Hawks only has one film in the AFI top 122 and if that's the case, that's downright baffling when one considers the sheer contribution of landmark films he made in nearly every genre. Big Sleep, for example, is one of the earliest trailblazers of film noir in its American form which is even more impressive when considered that few other films pushed the form's boundaries as far in terms of a labryrinthine story, an unapolagetically raw hero and risque dialogue.

7. Badlands (1973) dir. Terrence Malick- Malick made two films in the 1970's that grew his legend as he went into reclusion for 20 years before he made another pair of films that were both hailed as masterpieces. Malick is a director who has a unique style with incomparable cinematography that would make any comprehensive list of American films incomplete without his name on it. Badlands was the film which introduced his style to the world and its antiheroes- a pair of lovebirds on a killing spree- helped define the counterculture of the 70's.

8. The Awful Truth (1937) dir. Leo McCarey- A screwball comedy and melodrama that that won Best Director for Leo McCarey, The Awful Truth is an unconventional love story in that its about divorce. Time Magazine said it was "possibly the greatest love story ever made."

9. LA Confidential (1997) dir. Curtis Hanson -The star-studded modern-day noir stands the test of time as a relatively pure recreation of a genre that's near-dead. It was ranked among the top-rated films of the 90's when I conducted a poll of over 100 people and it seems to be reserved with classic status.

10. How the West was Won (1963) dir. John Ford-The film was the last of John Ford's Best Picture nominees and it could be argued that, in terms of scope, it was his ultimate masterpiece. The film was a grandiose spectacle on the level of David Lean and Cecille B. DeMille, and it borrowed a page from D.W. Griffith's "Intolerance" in the way it intertwined stories from different time periods.  It had the appeal of Best Picture winners "Around the World in 80 Days" or "Greatest Show on Earth" but unlike those two, it could actually be considered a work of art.

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11. Being There  (1979), directed by Hal Ashby, starring Peter Sellers, starring Peter Sellers, Shirley MacLaine, Melyn Douglas, Jack Warden
12. The Exorcist (1973), directed by William Friedkin, starring Ellen Burstyn, Max von Sydow, Lee J Cobb, Linda Blair, Jason Miller
13. Almost Famous (2000), directed by Cameron Crowe, starring Patrick Fugit, Frances McDormand, Jason Lee, Kate Hudson, Zooey Deschanel, Philip Seymour Hoffman
14. Night of the Hunter (1955), directed by Charles Laughton, starring Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, Peter Graves, Lillian Gish, James Gleason
15. The Matrix (1999), directed by Andrew and Lana Wachowski, starring Keanu Reeves, Hugo Weaving, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Gloria Foster
16. Terms of Endearment (1983) directed by James L Brooks, starring Shirley MacLaine, Debra Winger, Jack Nicholson, John Lithgow, Danny DeVito
17. East of Eden (1955), directed by Elia Kazan, starring James Dean, Raymond Massey, Julie Harris, Burl Ives, Jo Van Fleet
18. Blue Velvet (1986)-directed by David Lynch, starring Isabella Rossellini, Dean Stockwell, Dennis Hopper, Kyle MacLachlan, Laura Dern, Hope Lange

Prediciton for the AFI list: top 10 Westerns

1. The Searchers, John Ford-High Noon and The Searchers are usually what most film scholars will tell you are the two greatest Westerns ever made. The Searchers had an outrageously low ranking in the 1998 list of 96, but in the 2007 list, The Searchers skyrocketed up to somewhere between 10 and 20 (if I were to go check, than I might see more results than I want to). The Searchers is the seminal moment in John Ford's career and was John Wayne's richest character, both the two main icons of the film Western. It's also the only Western that some people in the film community cite as the greatest American film ever, period.
2. High Noon, Fred Zimmerman-The other Western that's truly an American classic. It's casting was perfect, it has the most tightly coiled narrative and introduced a number of innovations: The theme music contained an opening song, the film moving in real time, etc. It also had political subtext and the people behind the movie are rewarded with bravery, in retrospect
3. Stagecoach, John Ford-If The Searchers was the apex of Ford and Wayne's career, it all started with Stagecoach which revolutionized the Western by introducing both of them to the big stage. Stagecoach is a masterfully done tale that's admired and next to Searchers and High Noon, I'll bet it's the only film that most people in the film industry agree deserves to be included on the pantheon of classics.
4. Wild Bunch, Sam Peckinpaugh-Wild Bunch revolutionized the use of violence in movies and has a terrific narrative. It changed the nature of Westerns toward outlaws vs lawmen rather than on conflicts within a town that a hero would have to chose the right side to be on. It's also a very fun movie, but I most believe it's going to be #4 simply because it was ranked pretty high on both AFI lists, previously.
5. Shane, George Stephens-I find it to be kind of a corny film, but the experts consider it in the realm of classics and it has been voted both times. Jack Palance from City Slickers got an academy award for it. Perhaps, they view it as the definitive Western from the point of view of a child, since the star of the film besides Alan Ladd's Shane character is really a 12-year old kid.
6. Unforgiven, Clint Eastwood-Unforgiven might rank closer to 10 or 12 on a list of Westerns among film scholars who are experts specifically on the evolution of the Western, except for the fact that Clint Eastwood is so hot right now, so retroactively his film career enjoys a big bump. It is truly a good film but it would be an oversight to label it as the first retrospective Western that demythified what came before it. (That might be McCabe and Mrs Miller)
7. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kidd, George Roy Hill-Kind of like the rock stars of the Western, Paul Newman and Robert Redford's characters defined the Western heroes as supercool. But else why would Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kidd be selected at #7? Redford and Newman are both still alive and command a lot of respect, and this film made the top 100 twice.
8. Rio Bravo, Howard Hawks-All the John Ford films She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, How the West Was Won, My Darling Clementine, and Man Who Shot Liberty Valance will open the way to some sneakers to make it through do to vote splitting. With the help of Quentin Tarantino's tireless promotion (it's his favorite film) and the crowd that enjoys a light-hearted Western that can make them laugh, fawn over the romantic interests, and root for sympathetic characters plus the Dean Martin fan contingent, Rio Bravo should be able to seperate itself from the rest of the pack nicely.
9. How the West Was Won, John Ford-Is this John Ford's 3rd best film? Not necessarily, but it's his most grandiose title and some voters (like myself at first glance) might confuse this with Once Upon a Time in the West and vote for it. Plus, I hear it has Debbie Reynolds in it, who is still alive and actively pimping her career.
10. McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Rob Altman-I seriously think that whether McCabe & Mrs. Miller makes this list will serve as a litmus test to whether the film community truly feels that Altman's work was great enough to be considered among the classics. Altman had an extra entry in the top 100 last year with the addition of 1975's Nashville, and I know there are a lot of other good films after the first 9 such as Duel in the Sun, Red River, Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and My Darling Clementine but are any of them as definitive as this film (and like I said, there's vote splitting to worry about)? McCabe & Mrs. Miller demythified the genre significantly more than anyone else, and was such an interesting take on existing genre conventions.

Rio Bravo

I just saw Rio Bravo, one of the great Westerns from the John Wayne catalogue, that was directed by Howard Hawks and concieved by Hawks and Wayne as a more right-wing response to the supposedly "Unamerican" High Noon, but that's somewhat of an exxageration. There were a couple minor things about High Noon which Hawks and Wayne were responding to: Mainly that the sherriff shouldn't have gone asking inexperienced Deputies to help him and that in the event that he were to ask them, the townspeople of America would not have been that callow and shelfish (btw, a sidenote: reason #41 why High Noon is a great film: the characters make such complex choices, that you can argue for hours about the morality of their decisions).


In any case, I thought Rio Bravo was a truly delightful film. Although not particularly significant in the evolution of the genre, it has an incredible sense of fun to it because the characters, all of whom have nicknames such as "feathers," "stumpy," "Colorado," and "Dude," are so colorful. One could observe that Walter Brennan's "Stumpy" is the comic relief in the group, but one stroke of genius is that every character has a little bit of humor in them. Dean Martin (playing the alcoholic sidekick "Dude"), at times, plays the straight man to Stumpy or John Wayne, like he often did on the Dean Martin show. Martin is an unlikely choice but I think it's pitch perfect casting. Angie Dickinson and John Wayne made a good comic pairing as well. Watching Stagecoach and Searchers it's hard to fathom Wayne having a lighter side, but he does.

If I had to think of a theme to Rio Bravo it might be that of having to act in the present. Wayne's doubled by Colorado as the naive kid who he used to be, Dude as a reminder of how he could have turned out if he had so easily fallen into temptation, and Stumpy as the old crippled man he will turn into one day and the responsibility falls on Wayne to act decisively in the moment as opposed to those whose moments have not yet arrived or whose moments have passed.

I also see a reverse of the classic discourses in the Western as shown in films like Stagecoach and Shane, where civilization is neatly divided between the civilized, the wilderness, and the Western hero who has to mediate between them. In Stagecoach, the civilized characters (i.e. the banker, the Southern gentleman, the cavalry man's wife) turn out to be useless, while the town drunk, the prostitute and the fugitive are the ones who save the day. In Rio Bravo, the day is metaphorically saved. Civilization has been built and the rough-and-tumble fugitive (played by the very same actor) is now sheriff of the town, and he slowly arrives at herosim by sifting through the people around him and recognizing the value of the town drunk (Dude) and prostitute (Feathers). The allusion to the fact that Feathers was a prostitute at the end is the exact opposite of Stagecoach where we learn that Dallas is a prostitute first and a maternal woman with motherly and domesticated instincts second.

Ball of Fire as a screwball comedy

This was a short essay from a collection of short essays I did for a film class on Ball of Fire which I felt was a really underrated screwball comedy:

Ball of Fire was directed and written by three of the best at their genre. Howard Hawks was a notable director of screwball comedies and the team of Wilder and Brackett wrote a number of comedies including Ernst Lubitsch's funniest film Ninotchka (1939). Wilder would also later become once of cinematic history's greatest comedic and dramatic directors with The Apartment and Some Like it Hot.

In Hollywood Genres, Howard Schatz writes, "The Screwball comedy dominated Depression-era screen comedy and provided that period's most significant and engaging social commentary" (151). Schatz suggests that screwball comedies were not just escapist fare for Depression-era audiences but they remedied their shattered dreams that their poverty and discrepancies in wealth couldn't be overcome. One important element for this remedy to work was that there had to be a love story that crossed class boundaries, usually with the woman as poor but more socially apt and the man as the opposite.

In Ball of Fire, Gary Cooper isn't so much rich as he is distinguished in the world of academia. He is a lexicologist in charge of an encyclopedia project with eight other professors, each in charge of a different field of knowledge. The fact that the other professors are twice his age highlights just how smart he is in his field. Barbara Stanwyck, an excellent comic foil, is a nightclub singer whose boyfriend is a gangster on the run from the police. She comes into contact with Cooper through his work. He is doing a section for his encyclopedia on slang and enlists her to help him and needing to hide from the cops, she accepts. This set-up is very interesting because while Gary Cooper is not rich, he's an expert on the language of the rich in a sense. In turn, Stanwyck's character, Sugarpuss O'Shea, is lower-class only through his standards. In terms of actual material wealth, O'Shea is richer than Cooper because her boyfriend has stolen large amounts of money while he has worked nine years into his uncompleted encyclopedia. Also, Sugarpuss O'Shea has absolutely no academic credentials, but suddenly becomes of use to him as an expert on slang through her lower-class background. Many twists on the traditional form of the screwball comedy are thrown into the story adding enough complexity to the relationship that it becomes unclear who really has the upper-hand. Moreso, the language theme presents wealth as an illusion which validates the main message of screwball comedies as well.