The AFI Ought to Convey Again Its Prime 100 Films Checklist

I 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. Hundreds, presumably?

However I’ve by no means actually considered why I like lists a lot. I grew up obsessively watching Siskel & Ebert, which devoted annual episodes to the hosts’ lists of one of the best and worst movies of the 12 months. These episodes have been at all times 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 website online’s web page visits.” (Which, uh, honest.)

Which may clarify why solely Gene Siskel contributed to the one most necessary record of my teenage years: The American Movie Institute’s 100 Years, 100 Films. 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 People” to vote for the titles they thought-about “the 100 best American films of all time.”

Voters got an inventory from the AFI of 400 nominated movies, and requested to guage them primarily based on “recognition over time, essential and award recognition, inventive and technical achievement, historic significance, and cultural impression.” Their prime 100 was revealed on a star-studded, three-hour TV particular that aired on CBS, hosted by Jodie Foster, Richard Gere, and Sally Area. One of the best of one of the best, in accordance with voters, was Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane.

The TV broadcast of the AFI Prime 100 is kind of the doc of the late 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 vastly influential silent function The Delivery 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 embody 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 published about watching King Kong for the buildings, not the enormous ape.

READ MORE: Films That Have been Purported to Be Large, Then Flopped

The 100 Years, 100 Films TV particular was successful 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 record 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 completely different. 23 new movies joined the Prime 100, like Sidney Lumet’s 12 Indignant 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 another annual record — 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 sort, the truth is.

The American Movie Institute nonetheless exists, and nonetheless does necessary work working a conservatory and its annual AFI Fest, amongst different tasks. However they stopped producing annual lists in 2008. Those they created up to now stay prominently featured on the entrance web page of AFI’s website, however they haven’t been up to date in virtually 20 years.

From what I can collect on-line, the annual record custom largely ended as a result of the CBS broadcasts stopped garnering the huge 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.

“Your entire AFI record 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, a lot of whom have dangerous style and are uninformed about movie historical past.” He urged the boondoggle might have been known as “The 100 Biggest Comparatively Latest Standard Studio Movies Principally About White Males.”

Sure, the AFI Prime 100 record is flawed. (The record of individuals known as upon to speak about it on the CBS TV particular is very flawed.) The published is exasperating at instances. As a way to cram all 100 movies into a three-hour program, a lot of the honored titles obtained solely a minute or two of display time. Many A-list stars seem — no surprise the present received huge rankings — however virtually no historians or critics. Because of this, the “consultants” featured onscreen provide little historic context or technical insights. Who provides a crap what Tommy Larsorda considered Patton?

However in some methods, these flaws make the record extra useful as a time capsule, capturing not solely what individuals regarded as canonical American cinema within the late 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 Tune of Two People one of many true masterpieces of the silent period?”)

The modifications to the voters and to the ultimate record within the up to date prime 100 9 years later mirror that — and, the truth is, Ebert himself supplied 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 lease Citizen Kane and have the identical type of epiphany I had after I first noticed it as a young person.”

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 record 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 by way of 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 plenty of 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 by way of 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 plenty of 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 record sucks” type of inconsiderate web remark method. I imply the overwhelming majority are made as quick as doable by as few individuals as doable (or by no individuals, thanks ChatGPT). They contain virtually no analysis, and so they largely regurgitate the identical handfuls of titles time and again. As a substitute of a canon, you get an echo chamber.

Say what you’ll in regards to the AFI’s closing picks, however that’s not how their record was made. They polled 1500 individuals! They compiled their picks right into a handsomely produced tv particular! The alternatives might need been imperfect. (The speaking heads have been positively imperfect.) However they produced an inventory that folks talked about and debated and which completely superior the reason behind historic movie training.

That’s why the AFI must revive the Prime 100 custom. Not yearly; that was overkill. However as soon as a decade could be so helpful, like an American cousin to Sight & Sound’s authoritative “Greatest Films of All Time” record, 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 record might then be promoted on Letterboxd, it could possibly be mentioned on TikTok. A brand new particular might air on TCM. The lists’ decisions could possibly be screened at repertory theaters, and hyped on streamers like Netflix or the Criterion Channel.

Positive, you may nonetheless discover the previous AFI record; it’s most likely lots simpler to look at its alternatives now than it was after I tried to do it as a young person counting on his native Blockbuster. (You haven’t identified 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 12 months of the newest 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-about for that authoritative record, and the brand new era of potential filmgoers that could possibly be incepted with the love of previous films.

Come to think about it: 2028 would mark the thirtieth anniversary of that authentic AFI record, 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 People. Tommy Lasorda sadly handed away in 2021, however I’d be blissful to contribute on his behalf. And I guess plenty of others who owe a few of their movie training to the AFI Prime 100 could be too.