Vote for the National Film Registry!
Thursday, September 5, 2013 at 10:45PM 
Hi, it's Tim, looking to rope y'all into a little bit of cinematic democracy in action. The National Film Preservation Board, you perhaps know, is the advisory council that suggests to the Librarian of Congress which American-produced films should be admitted to the National Film Registry. And surely you know what that is! The list of films deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”, and worthy of being kept safe and preserved as a result (though unfortunately, being on the Registry doesn’t automatically mean a film is guaranteed preservation dollars, only the imprimatur of the Library of Congress saying, “Hey, people with film preservation dollars! Take a look at these, won’t you?”).
Now, the point of my bringing this up is that, while the Board advises the Librarian, it’s the public that advises the Board – any citizen is welcome to submit a list of nominees up to 50 films long that they believe to be worthy candidates for inclusion on the Registry. This nomination period, for this year’s inductees, closes on September 13, just over a week from now. And so I write this piece in the spirit of an exhortation: I don’t just want you to share a list of movies that you think should be inducted to the National Film Registry here in the comments section of this fine website, I want you to share that list with the National Film Board itself. For we are all well-educated cinephiles here, and I think our voices deserve to be heard. Information about nominating films can be found here, with links to a list of all films currently on the Registry, as well as some prominent films missing from it.
Here’s the list of movies that I’m going to submit after the jump from silents to absurdist cartoons to the Coen Bros...
Tim's 15
The Squaw Man (1914)
The first feature-length film shot in Hollywood, as well as the first film, of any length, directed by Hollywood’s leading master of glossy spectacle, Cecil B. DeMille. Simply put, it’s one of the most important artifacts of the American film industry.
Hypocrites (1915)
One of the handful of surviving films directed by Lois Weber, perhaps the most important early female director, and one of the most important directors of any gender in the 1910s. The copy in possession of the Library of Congress is in perilous condition, and such a landmark film cannot afford to be lost.
Straight Shooting (1917)
The oldest film directed by John Ford known to still exist, as well as his first feature. As one of the most highly-regarded of all American directors, his career milestones are of particular interest to the historian.
What Price Hollywood? (1932)
The oldest version of the hugely familiar A Star Is Born narrative template, and also the best: the nearly-forgotten Constance Bennett and the totally-forgotten Lowell Sherman both tear the screen apart as they assault the melodrama like you could only do in the Pre-Code era. Desperately worthy of a bigger audience
This Is the Army (1943)
The first and most popular of a weird little subgenre from World War II: revue films about people famous and not putting on a show to entertain the troops with a variety of songs and short scenes. Films which, themselves, were then sent around the world, to entertain the troops. A curious historical footnote that doesn’t deserve to be forgotten.
Screwball Squirrel (1944)
Tex Avery’s most legendarily aggressive comic cartoon is perhaps the most sustained dose of Surrealism ever perpetrated by a major American studio, and it took half a century before the rest of animation started to catch up to the deliberate, clever rule-flaunting of this absurdist masterpiece.
Seal Island (1948)
The first of Walt Disney’s True-Life Adventures, this short nature documentary more or less invented the form as we know it today: animals in their (slightly manipulated) environment, a stentorian narrator informing us what we’re looking at. Groundbreaking or not, Disney hasn’t done much right by these films in recent memory, and they deserve a higher profile.
Park Row (1952)
Sam Fuller, great iconoclast and hero to lovers of scraggly little B-pictures, only has one film on the Registry, and that’s just not right. This tribute to the history American news media, made for the money Fuller had in his pocket at the time, and never available in any decent home video format, is easily the most deserving candidate, much in need of readier access.
The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953)
With Ray Harryhausen having passed away recently, it’s the ideal moment to nod in the direction of his first major solo work, the film that paved the way for decades upon decades of movies in which a Giant Something terrorizes a city. Truly a groundbreaking and majorly influential B-picture.
Zorn’s Lemma (1970)
A watershed experimental film, reaching one of the widest audiences any non-representational feature ever has ever enjoyed. And like most experimental films of its generation, digital representations simply don’t capture the whole texture of the thing.
Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971)
The first great work of the blaxploitation era, a stylistically audacious work of identity politics that represents one of the first times that a minority filmmaker was able to create a financial smash hit totally outside of the strictures of the white-dominated film industry.
The Adventures of André and Wally B. (1984)
Not the first CGI animation of note; but it was, more or less, the first CGI cartoon, with the roundness and squishiness we associate with that word. As such, it’s arguably the first time that CGI proved that it could express personality and acting, and not simply render lifeless objects with plasticky sheen.
Todd Haynes debut!
Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1988)
A seismic early work in the New Queer Cinema and a major work of cultural commentary, the awkward rights situation involving the soundtrack (and the life story of the titular subject) have kept the film in bootleg form for a generation. Inclusion on the Registry would be a first step to legitimizing this kind of co-optive storytelling.
The War Room (1993)
The best film ever made about the American electoral process. Period. A rare example of a journalistic documentary that continues to be important and telling even two decades after the moment of its creation.
O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)
The first film to undergo digital color-correction, a technique which is now used so extensively and casually that it’s hard to think of anything that isn’t covered with a sheen of colors tweaked just-so. Maybe not something to praise, but it set a new standard for how commercial cinematography was going to look in the 21st Century.
So how about it? Who else is going to submit their nominations? Help shape the future of U.S. film culture!
Reader Comments (20)
The first six Star Trek movies. They're very American and deserve some preservation reassurance while in the custody of neglectful and cheap Paramount Pictures.
Brokeback Mountain would be a perfect choice
These are the 20 I sent:
Paris is Burning (1990)
Clockwork Orange, A (1971)
Mary Poppins (1964)
Pulp Fiction (1994)
Grease (1978)
Birds, The (1963)
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966)
Peter Pan (1953)
The Breakfast Club (1985)
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967)
Carrie (1976)
Terms of Endearment (1983)
Coal Miner’s Daughter (1980)
Moulin Rouge! (2001)
American Beauty (1999)
Titanic (1997)
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)
Funny Girl (1968)
When Harry Met Sally (1989)
Coming Home (1978)
Coming from a cultural standpoint, I voted for The Big Lebowski, Ghostbusters, and three Christmas cartoons from the '60s: How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, A Charlie Brown Christmas, and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Those were the first movies not already on the registry that came to mind when I thought of films that have engrained themselves into the pop culture lexicon.
OTT: On September 5 was the UK premiere of Diana and anyone read the reviews? AWFUL, even Watts wasn't saved of this mess. The reviews came on this line:
Despite a peroxide hair-job, she looks, sounds and acts nothing like the Princess of Wales. Wesley Snipes in a blonde wig would be more convincing... Watching her here feels almost like an optical illusion, because you simply don't believe that this actress can be giving this performance – it's stilted, overly mannered and bereft of anything human. In trying desperately (and understandably) to portray Diana accurately and reverentially, Watts has neglected to portray a person.
Robert, I think I love you. :)
robert and tim - great choices! now i have to think about my list in time for the 13th. i plan to rob a few of your collective choices. Strength in numbers!
a) Park Row is available from the UK's Masters of Cinema label on DVD. It is awesome.
b) The Fuller film I'd want to see on the list is The Crimson Kimono - a remarkably mature take on race and how those negatively affected by racism let it dictate a lot of their own actions.
I'll think longer on my list but the first two that spring to mind are the two touchstones from my boyhood--Murder On the Orient Express and The Towering Inferno. Both represent a style of starry, lavish escapism that needs to be remembered. And they're both from 1974!
There are a million movies I could shill for, but for the moment I want to submit a name: Frank Borzage. Where is the love for that guy? I see Seventh Heaven has been canonized. But where is History Is Made At Night? Whither Street Angel or Three Comrades? No No Greater Glory???? I mean, these are some of the most beautiful, moving films in Hollywood history, and in my experience, most cinephiles don't even know the guy's name.
From a quick look at the rest of the list, I'd say Only Angels Have Wings (man there are a lot of great Howard Hawks movies missing on there!), The Shop Around The Corner, Vincente Minnelli's Father Of The Bride, Written On The Wind, East Of Eden, The Naked Kiss, Love With A Proper Stranger (in light of the last few years of legislation, we need a reminder of what it was like when abortion wasn't an option), A Shot In The Dark, Wanda, Blue Velvet, The Princess Bride, Crybaby, Sleepless In Seattle, Beetlejuice, Pulp Fiction, Love And Basketball, and I am going to second @cal roth on Brokeback Mountain and @Robert on Paris Is Burning.
My nominees for the National Film Registry, 2013:
1. Wild Boys of the Road (1933)
2. It’s a Great Feeling (1949)
3. Daisy Kenyon (1947)
4. Bedlam (1946)
5. Dolores Claiborne (1995)
6. Imitation of Life (1959)
7. The Fly (1986)
8. Splendor in the Grass (1961)
9. Wagon Master (1950)
10. A Letter to Three Wives (1949)
Thanks Tim, Nathan and the rest of you who commented on this post. Yes, please -- submit your nominations to me, dross@loc.gov, for the 2013 Registry by next Friday, Sept. 13. Can't wait to read 'em. You guys are like wicked cool cinephiles or something!
Donna Ross
Boards Assistant
National Film Preservation Board
Library of Congress
Tim -- i love you for including SUPERSTAR. well done.
Wow, Tim, would it be a bad strategy if I just sent your list again and pretended it was mine? I haven't seen three of these films: Zorn’s Lemma (1970), Seal Island (1948), and The Adventures of André and Wally B. (1984). However, I love the way you think about preservation and what constitutes an important films. I tip my hat at you.
It's always surprising how many great films aren't on, so much Hitchcock missing!
I did the full 50:
1. A Letter to Three Wives-1949
2. Auntie Mame-1958
3. I Married a Witch-1942
4. Cry Havoc!-1943
5. The Reckless Moment-1949
6. Saboteur-1942
7. Lifeboat-1944
8. Westward the Women-1951
9. The Mating Season-1951
10. Howards End-1992
11. October Sky-1999
12. Die Hard-1988
13. Torch Song Trilogy-1988
14. Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory-1971
15. Orphans of the Storm-1922
16. Call Her Savage-1932
17. Holiday-1938
18. It Started with Eve-1942
19. Hannah and Her Sisters-1986
20. The Poseidon Adventure-1972
21. This Gun for Hire-1942
22. Strangers on a Train-1951
23. East of Eden-1955
24. Written on the Wind-1956
25. Inherit the Wind-1960
26. Funny Girl-1968
27. The Misfits-1961
28. Unfaithfully Yours-1948
29. Anna Christie-1930
30. The Bitter Tea of General Yen-1933
31. Dark Victory-1939
32. Longtime Companion-1989
33. The China Syndrome-1979
34. The Way We Were-1973
35. Camille-1936
36. Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?-1962
37. The Birds-1963
38. The Lion in Winter-1968
39. Hollywood Canteen-1944
40. The Breaking Point-1950
41. Beyond the Rocks-1922
42. Hell's Angels-1930
43. They Drive by Night-1940
44. Heaven Can Wait-1943
45. Since You Went Away-1944
46. Watch on the Rhine-1943
47. The Bachelor and the Bobbysoxer-1947
48. Imitation of Life-1959
49. The Miracle Worker-1962
50. Libeled Lady-1936
I thought of Brokeback Mountain too and while it's sure to be included one day isn't old enough yet. The films have to be 10 years old at least.
Correction: there are four films on your list I've never seen, actually. I haven't seen Hypocrites (nor heard of it until today, actually). Also, ditto Nathaniel's love for the inclusion of Superstar. I remember being SO EXCITED to go see this as a teenager in SF.
I sent in my list a couple months ago:
Gretchen the Greenhorn 1916 (Dorothy Gish)
The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg 1927 (Ramon Novarro)
The Skeleton Dance 1929 (1st Disney Silly Symphony)
Reefer Madness 1936 (camp/cult classic)
They're Always Caught 1938 (Crime Does Not Pay series)
Angels with Dirty Faces 1938
Quicker'n a Wink 1940 (Pete Smith Specialty)
Ball of Fire 1941
Random Harvest 1942
To Have and Have Not 1944
Star in the Night 1945 (Oscar winning Christmas short)
The Cat Concerto 1946 (I can't believe they don't have a Tom & Jerry cartoon yet)
I Remember Mama 1948 (NFR LOVES immigrant stories)
A Letter to Three Wives 1949
Strangers on a Train 1951
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes 1953
The Face of Lincoln 1956 (Oscar winning educational short)
Auntie Mame 1958
The Defiant Ones 1958
Plan 9 from Outer Space 1958 (Ed Wood)
The Diary of Anne Frank 1959
The Tingler 1959 (William Castle)
Spartacus 1960 (the biggest "why isn't this on there yet" of my list)
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? 1962
Jason and the Argonauts 1963 (for the same Ray Harryhausen reason as above)
Mary Poppins 1964
Beach Blanket Bingo 1965 (1960s teen movies)
Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! 1965 (Russ Meyer)
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner 1967
The Boys in the Band 1970 (landmark gay-themed film)
Pink Flamingos 1972 (John Waters)
The Poseidon Adventure 1972 (best 1970s disaster movie)
Sounder 1972
Carrie 1976 (best Stephen King horror movie)
Breaking Away 1978
Grease 1978 (top grossing movie musical)
Superman 1978 (first of the big superhero movies)
Sophie's Choice 1982
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan 1982 (best of the Star Trek movies)
Amadeus 1984
Blue Velvet 1986
Parting Glances 1986 (not the first, but the first widely seen AIDS movie)
Dirty Dancing 1987 (indie sleeper hit)
Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story 1988 (great minds think alike lol)
Who Framed Roger Rabbit 1988 (CGI blend of live action/animation)
Pulp Fiction 1994
The Shawshank Redemption 1994
Titanic 1997
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring 2001
Bowling for Columbine 2002
Movie Dearest ..
I love the fact you put Plan 9 from Outer Space on the list!
Btw, How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, A Charlie Brown Christmas, and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer were made for TV and are thus not eligible.
Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange was among the films I nominated for the Registry last year. Some of the other films I nominated were A Hard Day's Night, Mary Poppins, The Color Purple, Puss Gets the Boot (the first Tom & Jerry cartoon), Michael Jackson's BAD music video, A Wild Hare (the first Bugs Bunny cartoon), and Return of the Jedi.
Die Hard, Peter Jackson's LOTR trilogy, and TRON also deserve induction into the Registry.