National Film Registry
IDC/3: The Search for Truth | New Entries to National Film Registry | International Widescreen Festival Winners
New Entries to
National Film Registry
For the 10th consecutive year, the Library of Congress has designated 25 motion pictures for preservation in the National Film Registry, in recognition of their historic, cultural or aesthetic significance — the Registry's roster now includes some 250 titles. The presentation was delivered by Librarian of Congress James Billington at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Margaret Herrick Library in Beverly Hills, California. He selected the entries personally from a nomination list offered by moviegoers, film scholars, archivists, and the National Preservation Board itself. This year's entries are quite varied in terms of style, genre and subject matter, given the recent expansion of the registry's dictate about the type of films which can qualify. "What the selections have in common is their influence on the language of the movies," noted Billington. "Americans have been particularly good at speaking that language and coming up with new and innovative ways of expression. It's a great pleasure to make up the list, but it's also very taxing to decide on which films to select."
The 1998 Registry inductees include the following silent pictures: Westinghouse Works (1904, shot by G.W. "Billy" Bitzer), an industrial on a Pittsburgh production plant; the spiritual saga From the Manger to the Cross (1912, George K. Hollister); Charlie Chaplin's The Immigrant (1917, ASC members Roland Totheroh and William Foster); the Tom Mix adventure Sky High (1922, Benjamin Kline, ASC); The Lost World (1925, Arthur Edeson, ASC), based on the Arthur Conan Doyle novel; the comedy Pass the Gravy (1928); and The Phantom of the Opera, starring Lon Chaney (1925, Milton Bridenbecker, and ASC members Virgil Miller and Charles J. Van Enger). New inductees from the sound era are Steamboat Willie (1928), the first animated appearance of Mickey Mouse; James Cagney wreaking havoc in The Public Enemy (1931, Devereaux Jennings, ASC); 42nd Street (1933, Sol Polito, ASC), a behind-the-scenes peek at the life of a chorus girl; the Shirley Temple tearjerker Little Miss Marker (1934, Alfred Gilks, ASC); the horror classic Bride of Frankenstein (1935, John J. Mescall, ASC); newsreeel footage of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge Collapse (1940, Barney Elliot and co-workers at The Camera Shop), William Wellman's dark Western The Ox-Bow Incident (1943, Arthur Miller, ASC); the World War II air-raid drama Twelve O'Clock High (1949; Leon Shamroy, ASC); the film noir shoot-'em-up Gun Crazy (1949, Russell Harlan, ASC), and Ida Lupino's suspense-filled road film The Hitchhiker (1953, Nicholas Musuraca, ASC).
The Registry's eclectic taste is evidenced with the inclusion of The City (1939), a 45-minute examination of Manhattan filmed for that year's World's Fair, directed and photographed by Willard Van Dyke and Ralph Steiner; Modesta (1956), a 35-minute Puerto Rican production about women rebelling against their inconsiderate spouses; Dead Birds (1964, Eliot Elisofon), an ethnographic study of a Western New Guinea's Dani tribe; D.A. Pennebaker's Bob Dylan documentary Don't Look Back (1967, Pennebaker, Jones and Howard Alk); and Charles and Ray Eames's expressionist short The Powers of Ten (1978), which features a series of images that grow and shrink by factors of ten.
The more modern fare added to the Registry was Dennis Hopper's counterculture classic Easy Rider (1969, Laszlo Kovacs, ASC); Peter Bogdanovich's black-and-white small-town study The Last Picture Show (1971, Robert Surtees, ASC); and the crossdressing romantic comedy Tootsie (1982, Owen Roizman, ASC) starring Dustin Hoffman.