The AFI Reloaded
The AFI’s new list of the 100 Greatest American Movies and the Wednesday night TV special which presented the list told two very different stories. The list itself offered an updated and slightly improved canon of American cinema, suggesting that our collective appreciation of film and understanding of film history has grown in the nine years since the first list. The TV special, on the other hand, suggested the opposite. Filled with poorly chosen clips and inane celebrity soundbites, 100 YEARS…100 MOVIES: 10th ANNIVERSARY EDITION revealed far more about the state of our culture and media industries today than it did about film history.
On the whole, the AFI list got a little better. No seismic shifts happened. Documentaries, avant-garde, and independent films remain grossly overlooked. And none of Cosmodrome’s five picks—MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS, HIS GIRL FRIDAY, MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO, ACE IN THE HOLE, and L.A. CONFIDENTIAL— made it into the top 100. However, the AFI did make some positive and noteworthy additions to the list with pictures like SUNRISE (#82), SWING TIME (#90), and DO THE RIGHT THING (#97). Furthermore, the leaps forward on the list of American masterworks like THE SEARCHERS (from #96 to #12), VERTIGO (from #61 to #9), and RAGING BULL (from #24 to #4) represented positive steps forward for the AFI.
[Ed. note: this piece follows up on our recent discussion of what the AFI should add for its updated 100 Greatest. Click here to continue reading this story, or here for the original AFI post.]
Unfortunately, for every step forward the AFI took with its list, it took two steps backwards with its TV special. As a chance to explain the richness and importance of these movies, the TV special failed spectacularly. The TV special started out of the gates poorly with a routine montage of movie clips set to a truly dreadful song. The sole reason for using this song seemed to be that it included words like “bluebirds” and “rainbow” that could cleverly match to clips of Judy Garland. The result was far more clumsy than interesting or exciting.
As the TV special progressed, it told us far more about our contemporary culture than it did about film history. The special reflected our culture industry’s willingness to show images of violence over those of sex (or even naughty language for that matter). In showing clips from PULP FICTION (#94), CBS happily broadcast Samuel Jackson and John Travolta shooting a seated Frank Whaley to pieces, but included a dialogue scene that skillfully dodged any of the movie’s six trillion uses of the word “fuck.” Similarly, we got to see THE SIXTH SENSES’S hanging corpses and THE GODFATHER’S Michael Corleone shoot the Turk in face, complete with a dewy mist of red blood coming out of the back of his head. But parents must be happy to know that no child flipping channels through CBS would catch any glimpse of nudity. CBS’s broadcast standards reminded me of MPAA’s own rating system, which goes far softer on violent imagery than sexual content (watch THIS FILM IS NOT YET RATED for a more detailed examination of the MPAA’s rating practices). But it’s more than that too. There was a sense in which the makers of the AFI special almost gleefully chose particularly violent scenes from these movies to profile. Is showcasing violence—sandwiched between largely vacuous soundbites—the only way left to interest contemporary viewers in classic cinema? I certainly hope not.
Refreshingly, the AFI’s new list placed less weight on monumental “firsts.” For instance, BIRTH OF A NATION (previously #44) and THE JAZZ SINGER (previously #90) both made the list in 1998 based primarily on their reputations as the “first narrative feature” and “first sound movie” respectively—which, by the way, they are not. But neither movie made the list this time. And even if we grant that INTOLERANCE (#49 in 2007) may have replaced the BIRTH OF A NATION mostly because it represented a more racially sensitive nod to director D.W. Griffith, the elimination of the artistically and historically overrated JAZZ SINGER still suggests that the AFI’s conceptions of art and history might be maturing.
Praising films as canonical “firsts” is generally a fool’s errand for two reasons: one, you can usually always find another movie that tried the technique earlier; and two, great filmmaking is based on execution, not Newtonian discovery. AFI voters started to wake up to this; it’s a shame the people cutting these broadcast specials together are not. Even if the list eliminated misguided “first” entries like JAZZ SINGER and BIRTH OF A NATION, the TV special’s editors included multiple talking heads who erroneously spoke of other movies as “firsts.” Norman Jewison praised Milos Foreman’s 1975 feature ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST #33 in 2007) as the first time we were taken inside a mental institution in an honest way. Are we to believe that Samuel Fuller’s superior 1964 film SHOCK CORRIDOR or Frederick Wiseman’s 1967 documentary TITICT FOLLIES were never made? Or take Anne Bancroft’s comment that THE GRADUATE (#17 in 2007) was the first time a movie made fun of sex. Did pre-Code Hollywood never exist? Thankfully, neither comment was as egregious as Jack Valenti’s praising of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD back in 1998 as the first American movie to deal honestly with racial issues (read Jonathan Rosenbaum’s 1998 essay for more on this). But the inclusion of Jewison and Bancroft’s misguided comments serve to diminish our true understanding of film history and ask us to value CUCKOO’S NEST and THE GRADUATE for the wrong reasons.
The special would have benefited significantly by including the voices of actual film historians, scholars, and critics. Many such people vote for the AFI’s lists. Yet we heard from none of them. Next time I hope the AFI will consider calling J. Hoberman, Manohla Dargis, and Tom Gunning for interviews before it phones Robin Williams. The AFI’s parade of celebrities is clearly a sign of the times. Non-fiction television programs now have the same pressure on them as commercial feature movies to include as many A-list, high profile participants as possible. Even on public television, celebrity talking heads have become the key to getting one-off documentaries financed and aired. I don’t want to suggest that no actors or directors should be interviewed for these TV documentaries and specials. Having the voices of the men and women who participated in these films is invaluable. So are the voices of filmmaker-cinephiles like Martin Scorsese and Peter Bogdonavich. But some sort of balance between the household names who offer anecdotes and critics who offer insight would be nice.
Finally, the TV special resembled the current media industry in its wholesale repurposing of material. The special’s makers included soundbites from deceased actors like Jack Lemmon and Anne Bancroft (noted above) without indicating when the interviews were taped or that the speakers were no longer living. Even soundbites from living celebrities wound up being reused. We first heard Steven Spielberg describe IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE as “five hanky movie” last year during AFI’s 100 YEARS…100 YEARS special (where Capra’s film ranked as the #1 inspirational movie of all time). But this didn’t stop the AFI rehashing Spielberg’s “five hanky” line in Wednesday night’s broadcast in which IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE placed #20. Had I been a more attentive viewer of the AFI’s specials over the last nine years, I’m sure I would have noticed more direct instances of repurposed material. During the commercial breaks, we saw promotions for the musical remake of HAIRSPRAY, THE MATRIX TRILOGY on HD-DVD, and BLADE RUNNER: THE FINAL CUT (not to be confused with the original theatrical version or the Director’s Cut, mind you). Content repurposing has become ubiquitous in today’s entertainment landscape. Yet I resent the AFI for going along with it. The entire value of going back after 10 years and making a new list and accompanying special is to see how our ideas about the greatest American movies have changed, to see how these films speak to us in the present moment. By recycling clips and soundbites, the AFI does both the movies and us as viewers a disservice.