AFI's 100 Top American Films, Part II

Some interesting comparisons between the new list and the old (1997) AFI list (courtesy of the hard-working folks at Wikipedia (url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AFI's_100_Years..._100_Movies)):

Films on the 1997 list that weren't included in the 2007 list:

1. All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) (54)
2. Amadeus (1984) (53)
3. An American in Paris (1951) (68)
4. The Birth of a Nation (1915) (44)
5. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) (64)
6. Dances With Wolves (1990) (75)
7. Doctor Zhivago (1965) (39)
8. Fantasia (1940) (58)
9. Fargo (1996) (84)
10. Frankenstein (1931) (87)
11. From Here to Eternity (1953) (52)
12. Giant (1956) (82)
13. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967) (99)
14. The Jazz Singer (1927) (90)
15. The Manchurian Candidate (1962) (67)
16. Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) (86)
17. My Fair Lady (1964) (91)
18. Patton (1970) (89)
19. A Place in the Sun (1951) (92)
20. Rebel Without a Cause (1955) (59)
21. Stagecoach (1939) (63)
22. The Third Man (1949) (57)
23. Wuthering Heights (1939) (73)

Films released between 1997-2006 were added to AFI list:

1. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) (50)
2. Saving Private Ryan (1998) (71)
3. The Sixth Sense (1999) (89)
4. Titanic (1997) (83).

Films made prior to 1996 that make their first appearance on the 2007 list:

1. 12 Angry Men (1957) (87)
2. All The President's Men (1976) (77)
3. Blade Runner (1982) (97)
4. Cabaret (1972) (63)
5. Do The Right Thing (1989) (96)
6. The General (1927) (18)
7. In The Heat Of The Night (1967) (75)
8. Intolerance (1916) (49)
9. The Last Picture Show (1971) (95)
10. Nashville (1975) (59)
11. A Night At The Opera (1935) (85)
12. The Shawshank Redemption (1994) (72)
13. Sophie's Choice (1982) (91)
14. Spartacus (1960) (81)
15. Sullivan's Travels (1941) (61)
16. Sunrise (1927) (82)
17. Swing Time (1936) (90)
18. Toy Story (1995) (99)
19. Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? (1966) (67)

A side-by-side comparison of the lists can be found here.

He has four on the list. You missed Rear Window (48) and North by Northwest (55).

Thanks, Joe -- I actually didn't expect that many changes from only a decade ago. The film the rose on the list the most was "The Searchers," a film that got booted out of the critic's top 10 poll in BFI's Sight and Sound by "Singin' in the Rain." "Vertigo" rose from 61 to number 9. "Intolerance" should have pleased you, Joe. I feel there were strange exclusions like "The Third Man" booted out by such films as "Toy Story?" Of course, the criteria makes the list very subjective.

Need another cup-of-coffee -- it's just past 7:00 AM here so scanning, I missed the other two Hitchcock films.

Some preliminary observations:

Glad to see that the AFI voters were paying attention to some of my recommendations. Birth of a Nation out -- Intolerance in. Dances with Wolves and My Fair Lady both dumped. Buster Keaton (The General) added.

I can only imagine that The Third Man was left off the new list because voters perceived it to be a British film rather than an American film. Nothing else can explain why it was left off while a mediocre film like Cabaret was added.

What can explain the huge jump (+84 spots) in the rankings for The Searchers? Well, there were some retrospectives on the film for its 50th anniversary and a DVD reissue that, I think, helped enormously. But I still agree with this review in Slate, which characterized the film as "preposterous in its plotting, spasmodic in its pacing, unfunny in its hijinks, bipolar in its politics, alternately sodden and convulsive in its acting, not to mention boring." 12th best American movie of all time? It's not even the 12th best Western.

Only two new films in the top ten: Raging Bull and Vertigo. My opinions on the latter need not be recounted here. I can't see Raging Bull as the fourth-best movie of all time (it replaced Gone With the Wind at that spot). Don't misunderstand me: Raging Bull is a very good film, but I think it's the kind of auteur film that appeals more to industry professionals and critics than to audiences. There are lots of movies that I'd rank higher than Raging Bull.

Biggest surprise for me: the addition of Sunrise to the list. Honestly, I didn't think that any pre-1997 film would have been added by the voters to the new list, but to have a 1927 silent film added was absolutely unexpected (The General and Intolerance were also added, making a net addition of two silents to the list). But what can explain its sudden popularity? I suppose its availability on DVD had something to do with it, but that can't be all. Maybe it's being taught in film schools now. Anyway, it's a great movie, and a good addition to the list.

Biggest loser of the night: Dr. Zhivago. 39 on the 1997 list, didn't even make the cut in 2007. Big epics from the '50s and '60s didn't do well as a group (Ben Hur, e.g., dropped 28 spots and just managed to hang onto the last position in the list), although Spartacus joined the new list for the first time.

Our posts crossed, LW, but I still managed to address some of the points that you raised. I'll have more observations later.

Had to do some cyberspace acrobatics to get to the Wikipedia article -- this is a direct link:

Wikipedia analysis

For some reason, the Wikipedia links just aren't working today. Maybe those pages are "under construction."

Some more random observations:

If Dr. Zhivago was the biggest loser of the night, the biggest winner was The General, which wasn't even on the 1997 list but is number 18 on the 2007 list. I'd like to think that the voters belatedly recognized their grievous omission ("Three Chaplin movies but no Keaton movies? What were we thinking??"), but that still doesn't make up for the omission of Harold Lloyd from the list.

Why Swing Time and not, say, Top Hat?

I was surprised to see that The Shawshank Redemption, number 72 on the 2007 list, wasn't included in the 1997 list. Not that I think it's such a superior film (for Stephen King adaptations, give me The Shining any day), but it's a highly regarded film by a wide variety of people. Not people who saw the movie when it was initially released, but lots of people since then (sorta' like Citizen Kane and It's a Wonderful Life).

Three films moved up more than 50 positions from the 1997 list to the 2007 list: The Searchers (+84), City Lights (+65) and Vertigo (+52). All three baffle me. I'm not a big fan of The Searchers or Vertigo, although I understand how they may have gained in status over the last decade. But what propelled City Lights so high? Have there been a lot of Chaplin film fests in the last ten years? As it is, The Circus is probably better than City Lights, which is handicapped by Chaplin's regrettable habit of indulging in mawkish sentimentality. Plus, The Circus has monkeys.

Maybe, just maybe, Amadeus disappeared from the list because too many voters saw the "director's cut edition" of the DVD. It has too many scenes that Forman should have kept on the cutting-room floor.

Is it possible that some voters actually watched Griffith's Birth of a Nation. That would explain its disappearance. Ditto The Jazz Singer.

Perhaps America's love affair with James Dean is finally over. Both Giant and Rebel Without a Cause dropped out of the AFI top 100.

Cabaret? WTF??

The UBB code doesn't like the syntax of the Wikipedia link, Joe. I've run into that before. In this case i suspect it doesn't like the "..." in the link text.

Joefromchicago has made some excellent comparisons.

Two 1967 movies about racial discrimination seem to have traded places. "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" dropped out of the top 100 and "In the Heat of the Night" was added to the top 100.

I enjoyed watching "Toy Story" with my children but I am shocked that it was added to the top 100.

You appear to not care for musicals, Joe, but I would have placed "Chicago" in the top 100 before "Cabaret." I've seen the original "Cabaret" on Broadway and the film falls short on several counts. It did not particularly communicate the shoddiness of the night club. "Toy Story?" "Finding Nemo" maybe, but not "Toy Story."

Are you kidding? I love musicals. I'm glad to see that Singin' in the Rain is in the top ten in both lists. But I can name about a dozen musicals that are better than Cabaret.


Well, Toy Story may be there more for its significance as the first feature length CGI hit film than for its value as a movie.

I suspect that you're right.

My list of musicals or musical comedy to replace "Cabaret" would include "Oliver!," "Victor Victoria" (not just a movie but a ROTL funny movie), "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers," and, come on, the best of the MGM musicals, "The Bandwagon."

What about Busby Berkeley--do any of this films appear in the list. (Yeah, i know, but i'm too lazy to look for myself.)

AFI 100: 'Kane' still number one

BY ROGER EBERT / June 21, 2007


Welles' "Citizen Kane" is still the greatest American film of all time. Coppola's "The Godfather" is second. Scorsese's "Raging Bull" and Hitchcock's "Vertigo" have cracked the Top 10, booting out "The Graduate" (No. 7 to No. 17) and "On the Waterfront" (No. 8 to No. 19). And Ford's "The Searchers" hurtled from No. 96 to No. 12.

So says the American Film Institute. Its list of the Top 100 American Films, voted on by a group of 1,500 filmmakers, critics and historians, was revealed Wednesday night on a TV special hosted by Morgan Freeman, star of "The Shawshank Redemption" (No. 72).

Lists like these cry out to be disagreed with. Seconds after an advance copy was sent to news outlets, film critic Peter Debruge e-mailed me: "Of all the issues surrounding this list, my biggest question: Where did 'Fargo' go?"

What? "Fargo" not on the list? Unthinkable, considering that, well, I was going to name a title that has no business being on the list, but actually they all have a claim, even the few like "High Noon" that I personally don't much like. It's just that -- what? No "Fargo."

In the aftermath of the first list, issued in 1998, I received enough complaints about missing titles to supply two or three more lists. No doubt most of those 1,500 experts are themselves dismayed by titles that did and didn't make the cut. But such lists serve two functions: (1) The television special makes money for the American Film Institute, which is a noble and useful institution, and (2) some kid somewhere is gonna rent "Citizen Kane" and have the same kind of epiphany I had when I first saw it as a teenager.

New films become old films so fast. "Raging Bull" came out 27 years ago. It's older than "Casablanca" (No. 3) was when I became a film critic. According to the Motion Picture Association of America, more than 50 percent of moviegoers are under 27. They are going to find movies on this list that were made before their grandparents were born -- and, if judging by the kids I saw Buster Keaton's "The General" (No. 18) with, they might love them.

Ah, but there's the problem: Will they find out about them? Too many younger moviegoers are wasting their precious adolescence frying their brains with vomitoriums posing as slasher movies. A list like the AFI's can do some good. During a Google search for "age of average moviegoer," I came across a column by critic T.C. Candler that opened with this quote:

"I have here a heartfelt message from a reader who urges me not to be so hard on stupid films, because they are 'plenty smart enough for the average moviegoer.' Yes, but one hopes being an average moviegoer is not the end of the road: that one starts as a below-average filmgoer, passes through average, and, guided by the labors of America's hardworking film critics, arrives in triumph at above-average."

Candler was quoting me, and I cannot agree more. To take a hypothetical possibility, if you were to see all 100 films on the AFI list, by the end of that experience, you would no longer desire to see a Dead Teenager Movie. (Yes, there could be a great Dead Teenager Movie. Please send me a list of the 100 greatest.)

To read over the film institute's list is to remember spine-tingling moments in movie theaters. The ballet of space ships in "2001." The soaking-wet dance in "Singin' in the Rain." The scary perfection of Astaire and Rogers, the perfect anarchy of the Marx Brothers, the anarchic warfare in "Apocalypse Now," the warfare of obsession in "Vertigo."

The list will become a retail tool. AOL, Best Buy and Moviefone have scheduled promotions. You know that Netflix and Blockbusters will push it. The movie channels will feature titles from it. Some newbie will find out who James Stewart or Ingrid Bergman was.

So in the last analysis, it doesn't really matter what movies are on the list. What matters is the movies on the list, voted by 1,500 above-average moviegoers who don't think "Citizen Kane" has aged one day.

Sixty-nine of the films on the American Film Institute list are reviewed as Great Movies at www.rogerebert.com.

AMERICAN FILM INSTITUTE'S GREATEST MOVIES

1. "Citizen Kane" (1941)
2. "The Godfather" (1972)
3. "Casablanca" (1942)
4. "Raging Bull" (1980)
5. "Singin' in the Rain" (1952)
6. "Gone With the Wind" (1939)
7. "Lawrence of Arabia" (1962)
8. "Schindler's List" (1993)
9. "Vertigo" (1958)
10. "The Wizard of Oz" (1939)
11. "City Lights" (1931)
12. "The Searchers" (1956)
13. "Star Wars" (1977)
14. "Psycho" (1960)
15. "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968)
16. "Sunset Boulevard" (1950)
17. "The Graduate" (1967)
18. "The General" (1927)
19. "On the Waterfront" (1954)
20. "It's a Wonderful Life" (1946)
21. "Chinatown" (1974)
22. "Some Like It Hot" (1959)
23. "The Grapes of Wrath" (1940)
24. "E.T. -- The Extra-Terrestrial" (1982)
25. "To Kill a Mockingbird" (1962)
26. "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" (1939)
27. "High Noon" (1952)
28. "All About Eve" (1950)
29. "Double Indemnity" (1944)
30. "Apocalypse Now" (1979)
31. "The Maltese Falcon" (1941)
32. "The Godfather, Part II" (1974)
33. "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (1975)
34. "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" (1937)
35. "Annie Hall" (1977)
36. "The Bridge on the River Kwai" (1957)
37. "The Best Years of Our Lives" (1946)
38. "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" (1948)
39. "Dr. Strangelove" (1964)
40. "The Sound of Music" (1965)
41. "King Kong" (1933)
42. "Bonnie and Clyde" (1967)
43. "Midnight Cowboy" (1969)
44. "The Philadelphia Story" (1940)
45. "Shane" (1953)
46. "It Happened One Night" (1934)
47. "A Streetcar Named Desire" (1951)
48. "Rear Window" (1954)
49. "Intolerance" (1916)
50. "Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" (2001)
51. "West Side Story" (1961)
52. "Taxi Driver" (1976)
53. "The Deer Hunter" (1978)
54. "M*A*S*H" (1970)
55. "North by Northwest" (1959)
56. "Jaws" (1975)
57. "Rocky" (1976)
58. "The Gold Rush" (1925)
59. "Nashville" (1975)
60. "Duck Soup" (1933)
61. "Sullivan's Travels" (1941)
62. "American Graffiti" (1973)
63. "Cabaret" (1972)
64. "Network" (1976)
65. "The African Queen" (1951)
66. "Raiders of the Lost Ark" (1981)
67. "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (1966)
68. "Unforgiven" (1992)
69. "Tootsie" (1982)
70. "A Clockwork Orange" (1971)
71. "Saving Private Ryan" (1998)
72. "The Shawshank Redemption" (1994)
73. "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (1969)
74. "The Silence of the Lambs" (1991)
75. "In the Heat of the Night" (1967)
76. "Forrest Gump" (1994)
77. "All the President's Men" (1976)
78. "Modern Times" (1936)
79. "The Wild Bunch" (1969)
80. "The Apartment" (1960)
81. "Spartacus" (1960)
82. "Sunrise" (1927)
83. "Titanic" (1997)
84. "Easy Rider" (1969)
85. "A Night at the Opera" (1935)
86. "Platoon" (1986)
87. "12 Angry Men" (1957)
88. "Bringing Up Baby" (1938)
89. "The Sixth Sense" (1999)
90. "Swing Time" (1936)
91. "Sophie's Choice" (1982)
92. "Goodfellas" (1990)
93. "The French Connection" (1971)
94. "Pulp Fiction" (1994)
95. "The Last Picture Show" (1971)
96. "Do the Right Thing" (1989)
97. "Blade Runner" (1982)
98. "Yankee Doodle Dandy" (1942)
99. "Toy Story" (1995)
100. "Ben-Hur" (1959)



copyright 2007, rogerebert.com
privacy policy & terms of use

Some musicals that aren't on the AFI list and that are better than Cabaret:
The Blues Brothers
The Music Man
The Unsinkable Molly Brown
42nd Street
South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut
Meet Me In St. Louis
Road to Morocco
Gigi
Fame
The Producers (the original, not the new one)
and anything with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers (except Swing Time, which is already on the list)

I'm not saying that any of these should be in the top 100 (except The Producers which should be there), I'm just saying they're all better than Cabaret.

Nope, not a one.

That's a shame. Busby's dance routines were "ground-breaking," both in terms of choreography and cinematography.

Neither "Gypsy" nor "Mame" in the top 100. How can they ignore Ms. Rosalind so?