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The greatest American films according to who? >> Controversy surrounds the AFI's list of Top 100 movies by MATTHEW HAYS
"This is an exciting moment in American film history," AFI director and CEO Jean Picker Firstenberg enthused to the press. "As the end of this century approaches and we reflect on its defining achievements, among the most powerful and successful is, without question, the motion picture. Through the collective judgment of leaders from across the American film community... AFI has identified 100 movies which set the standard and mark the excellence of the first century of American cinema."
Incredible omissions
AFI spokesman Seth Oster defends the list, saying the intent of the AFI has been misinterpreted and misrepresented. "I don't think this is contentious," he insists. "This was intended to generate a dialogue, to get people talking about movies. We feel this has produced the best possible outcome, as it got people talking about film history." The mystery ballot
This has raised the worst suspicions of industry onlookers, who say the mystery around the process of choosing the top 100 leaves a litany of troubling questions. One theory suggests the AFI may have taken financial kickbacks from studios in order to have their titles appear on the list, so as to secure healthy video sales for at least the next decade. Oster staunchly denies the charge. "There are some wild and completely inaccurate theories flying around, and that's one of them. The studios didn't become part of this until well after the initial 400 were chosen." Oster says AFI members--experts in the field of film history--were polled by the organization to come up with an initial list of 400 films. The AFI then sent the list to a select group including 1,500 film types as well as prominent citizens (President Clinton and Vice President Gore and their wives, among them), who responded "overwhelmingly," according to Oster. How many responded, what the precise ballot count was and exactly who was polled will remain a secret, says Oster, defending that decision. "This is exactly the same as the Academy not releasing all the numbers from the Oscar race every year." Rental redux Though the list may seem easy to dismiss, changes in the video market should make it a going concern for anyone who relies on their local rental outlets for variety in their cinema diet. As the introduction to the Newsweek "100 Best Movies Ranked by the AFI" tie-in issue stated, "The video marketplace will be flooded with tapes of all or most of the 100, authorized by a historic consortium of studios that own the films." (Newsweek was the official media sponsor of the AFI Top-100 event.) It's also worth noting that the studios, which generally charge documentary filmmakers a small fortune for the rights to use clips from their films, waived all fees for use during the CBS Top-100 special, clearly recognizing the free advertising opportunity. Increasingly, independently-owned video outlets are being pushed out of the so-called free market, with massive chains taking over. These chains often have deals with the studios to buy in bulk; you can bet if they can get 40 copies of one higher-profile movie, they'll choose that option over stocking 35 copies of the same movie and actually taking the trouble to choose five smaller, more "difficult" films to give customers added choice. This may sound alarmist--and like a somewhat reductive, cause-and-effect argument--but two weeks ago I found good reason for worry: I ventured into my local mega-chain video outlet and requested Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Don Siegel's classic 1956 film which doubles as a horrifying metaphor for both the conformity of McCarthyism and communism. The clerk asked if I wanted the "old black and white version," as she clicked away on her computer terminal. Indeed, the store didn't have it (though they did have both inferior remakes). "Well, if it had made that list," she told me, knowing I'd know exactly what she was referring to, "I'm sure we'd have a copy of it by now." This, says Falsetto, is precisely why AFI's Top 100 should be considered "suspect... this list promotes a certain cultural amnesia. It will undoubtedly have cultural significance. Schools will be influenced, as well as individual filmgoers. Frankly, it's easy to find 100--even 500--great movies in U.S. history. But this was done shoddily and is a disservice to the art." "There is no right or wrong answer," counters Oster. "This is a snapshot of this moment in film history. The AFI welcomes the continued discussion."
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In June, I was invited on a CBC radio program to discuss the American Film Institute's Top 100 Greatest American Movies of all time. The list--which seemed innocuous enough at the time--had just been made public, and there was plenty of brouhaha and fanfare surrounding it: a CBS special in which the stars hosted the countdown and clips from each movie were shown. And Ted Turner's TNT channel promised a summer-long series, screening a different Top-100 movie every week.
Though the press releases were effusive enough, the list set off a firestorm of debate among film critics, historians and academics about who did and didn't make the cut. Detractors say the AFI has set about creating an unofficial film canon, one which threatens to set the standard for availability on video for decades to come. Some argue that the very idea of a list is a bad one--witness as well the bickerings over the literary list released earlier this summer (Entertainment Weekly brilliantly spoofed the media's fetish for lists, printing their own "The List of the 10 Best Lists" earlier this month.)
"The unfortunate thing about this list," says Concordia film studies professor Mario Falsetto, "is that many people will think these really are the best movies around because they wear the AFI stamp of approval." Falsetto, an authority on the films of Nicholas Roeg and Stanley Kubrick, cites numerous problems with the list, including the exclusion of such vitally important film artists as Buster Keaton, Douglas Sirk, Josef von Sternberg, John Cassavetes and Preston Sturges, calling these "incredible omissions." Falsetto also points out that the flimsy representation of silent films (a mere four) indicates a lopsided bias towards films made in recent decades (witness la Spielberg, who made the list five times.)
Falsetto also says films like Forrest Gump, The Sound of Music and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner are iffy Top-100 entries, at best. "It's not that these 100 aren't worth watching," he says, "but which filmmakers were discarded in the process?"
However, questions have been raised about the economic stakes involved in a list with this kind of publicity behind it. AFI board chairman Tom Pollock admitted to Variety that much of the reason for creating the list was to help the non-profit organization's weakened coffers. "We had to get entrepreneurial," he told the industry mag, noting that the National Endowment for the Arts' grant to the AFI was cut, from what was once nearly a million dollars to its current $40,000. But worse still, Pollock described the fiscal offshoots for the studios themselves: "Studios live on recycling their film libraries."