Prowadzona przez Bibliotekę Kongresu USA „National Film Registry” powiększyła się o kolejne 25 tytułów, które tym samym zakwalifikowane zostały jako dziedzictwo kulturowe Stanów Zjednoczonych. W tym gronie znalazły się w tym roku m.in. „Titanic”, „Szklana pułapka” i „Goonies”.
„National Film Registry” uzupełniany jest corocznie przez
Bibliotekę Kongresu USA o 25 tytułów. Filmy te wybierane są spośród propozycji
przekazywanych przez widzów za pomocą strony internetowej Biblioteki Kongresu i
w porozumieniu z National Film Conservation Board. W tym roku wśród propozycji
nadesłanych przez prywatne osoby znalazło się 5200 tytułów. W sumie w „National
Film Registry” znajduje się już 725 tytułów.
Tegoroczny zestaw filmu, które znalazły się w tym
prestiżowym rejestrze jest szczególnie interesujący. Są tutaj bowiem m.in. „Szklana
pułapka”, „Titanic”, dwa filmy Richarda Donnera „Goonies” i „Superman”,
animowany „Dumbo”, film Nolana „Memento”, znakomite „Pole marzeń”, historyczny „Spartacus”
i muzyczna „La Bamba”.
Jest też na liście kilka historycznych i klasycznych dzieł
amerykańskiej kinematografii. Takim wydarzeniem jest na pewno „Interior New
York Subway, 14th Street to 42nd Street” z 1905 roku oraz pochodzący z lat
30-tych „With the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain”. Amerykańską klasykę
filmową reprezentują też „Zgadnij kto przyjdzie na obiad” i „Dżentelmeńska
umowa”.
W tym roku do tego zestawu dołączyły:
Ace in the Hole (aka Big Carnival) (1951)
Boulevard Nights (1979)
Die Hard (1988) / Szklana pułapka
Dumbo (1941)
Field of Dreams (1989) / Pole marzeń
4 Little Girls (1997)
Fuentes Family Home Movies Collection (1920s-1930s)
Gentleman’s Agreement (1947) / Dżentelmeńska umowa
The Goonies (1985)
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967) / Zgadnij kto przyjedzie
na obiad
He Who Gets Slapped (1924)
Interior New York Subway, 14th Street to 42nd Street (1905)
La Bamba (1987)
Lives of Performers (1972)
Memento (2000)
Only Angels Have Wings (1939)
The Sinking of the Lusitania (1918)
Spartacus (1960)
Superman (1978)
Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser (1988)
Time and Dreams (1976)
Titanic (1997)
To Sleep with Anger (1990)
Wanda (1971)
With the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain (1937-1938)
Opisy filmów (w oryginale):
Ace in the Hole (aka Big Carnival) (1951)
Based on the infamous 1925 case of Kentucky cave explorer
Floyd Collins, who became trapped underground and whose gripping saga created a
national sensation lasting two weeks before Collins died. A deeply cynical look
at journalism, “Ace in the Hole” features Kirk Douglas as a once-famous New
York reporter, now a down-and-out has been in Albuquerque. Douglas plots a
return to national prominence by milking the story of a man trapped in a Native
American cave dwelling as a riveting human-interest story, complete with a
tourist-laden, carnival atmosphere outside the rescue scene. The callously
indifferent wife of the stricken miner is no more sympathetic: “I don’t go to
church. Kneeling bags my nylons.” Providing a rare moral contrast is Porter
Hall, who plays Douglas’ ethical editor appalled at his reporter’s actions.
Such a scathing tale of media manipulation might have helped turn this
brilliant film into a critical and commercial failure, which later led Paramount
to reissue the film under a new title, “The Big Carnival.”
Boulevard Nights (1979)
“Boulevard Nights” had its genesis in a screenplay by UCLA
student Desmond Nakano about Mexican-American youth and the lowrider culture.
Director Michael Pressman and cinematographer John Bailey shot the film in the
barrios of East Los Angeles with the active participation of the local
community (including car clubs and gang members). This street-level strategy
using mostly non-professional actors produced a documentary-style depiction of
the tough choices faced by Chicano youth as they come of age and try to escape
or navigate gang life (“Two brothers…the street was their playground and their
battleground”). In addition to “Boulevard Nights,” this era featured several
films chronicling youth gangs and rebellion — “The Warriors” (1979), “Over the
Edge” (1979), “Walk Proud” (1979) and “The Outsiders” (1983). The film faced
protests and criticism from some Latinos who saw outsider filmmakers, albeit
well-intentioned, adopting an anthropological perspective with an excessive
focus on gangs and violent neighborhoods. Nevertheless, “Boulevard Nights”
stands out as a pioneering snapshot of East L.A. and enjoys semi-cult status in
the lowrider community.
Die Hard (1988)
In this now-classic slam-bang thriller, Bruce Willis stars
as a New York cop who faces off, alone, against a team of terrorists inside a
high-tech, high-rise Los Angeles office tower. Gripping action sequences and
well-crafted humor made this film a huge hit and launched Willis as a major
box-office star. Alan Rickman, as witty insouciant terrorist and “exceptional
thief” Hans Gruber, serves as Willis’ memorable foe. Because the film is set
during the Christmas season, many people now consider “Die Hard” a necessary
part of their annual holiday viewing, a counterpoint to other holiday staples
such as “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
Dumbo (1941)
Disney’s charming, trademark animation finds a perfect
subject in this timeless tale of a little elephant with oversize ears who lacks
a certain confidence until he learns — with the help of a friendly mouse — that
his giant lobes enable him to fly. Disney’s fourth feature film gained
immediate classic status thanks to its lovely drawing, original score (which
would go on to win the Oscar that year) and enduring message of always
believing in yourself.
Field of Dreams (1989)
Iowa farmer Kevin Costner one day hears a voice telling him
to turn a small corner of his land into a baseball diamond: “If you build it,
they will come.” “They” are the 1919 Black Sox team led by the legendary
Shoeless Joe Jackson. Although ostensibly about the great American pastime,
baseball here serves as a metaphor for more profound issues. Leonard Maltin
lauded “Field of Dreams” as “a story of redemption and faith, in the tradition
of the best Hollywood fantasies with moments of pure magic.”
4 Little Girls (1997)
An important documentary concerning America’s civil rights
struggle, “4 Little Girls” revisits the horrific story of the young children
who died in the 1963 firebombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in
Birmingham, Alabama. Director Spike Lee first became interested in the story as
a student at NYU when he read a 1983 New York Times Magazine article by Howell
Raines. Lee combines his experience in fiction filmmaking with documentary
techniques, sensitively rendered interviews, photos and home movies to tell the
story. The timing of this production was important due to the ages of the key
witnesses and relatives and the need to refresh viewers’ memories regarding a
dark period in U.S. history.
Fuentes Family Home Movies Collection (1920s-1930s)
Longtime Corpus Christi, Texas, residents Antonio Rodríguez
Fuentes (1895-1988) and Josefina Barrera Fuentes (1898-1993) were very active
in their local Mexican-American community. Their collection of home movies —
mostly from the 1920s and shot on 9.5 mm amateur film format — are among the
earliest visual records of the Mexican-American community in Texas and among
the first recorded by Mexican-American filmmakers. As with the best home
movies, the images provide a priceless snapshot of time and place, including
parades, holidays, fashions and the rituals of daily life. The beautiful images
also reflect the traditionally fluid nature of the U.S.-Mexico border. The
collection is a joint project between the Texas Archive of the Moving Image and
Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi.
Gentleman’s Agreement (1947)
Winning the 1947 Academy Award for best picture and
considered daring at the time, “Gentleman’s Agreement” was one of the first
films to directly explore the still-timely topic of religious-based
discrimination. Philip Green (Gregory Peck), a Gentile, is a renowned magazine
writer. In order to obtain firsthand knowledge of anti-Semitism, he decides to
pose as a Jew. What he discovers about society, and even his own friends and
colleagues, radically alters his perspective and throws his own life into
turmoil. Director Elia Kazan masterfully crafts scenes that reveal bigotry both
overt and often insidiously subtle. The film was based on a book by Laura Z.
Hobson.
The Goonies (1985)
The fingerprints of executive producer Steven Spielberg
visibly mark every second of “The Goonies,” with the plot sporting a narrative
structure and many themes characteristic of his work. Spielberg penned the
original story, hand-selected director Richard Donner and hired Chris Columbus
(who had written the 1983 “Gremlins”) to do the offbeat screenplay. With its
keen focus on kids of agency and adventure, “The Goonies” protagonists are Tom
Sawyeresque outsiders on a magical treasure hunt, and the story lands in the
continuum between where “Our Gang” quests leave off and the darker spaces of
Netflix’s recent “Stranger Things” pick up.
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967)
Though it would be Spencer Tracy’s last film and the second
film for which Katharine Hepburn would win an Academy Award for best actress,
even these movie milestones are somewhat overshadowed by the then-novel plot of
the 1967 “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.” Hepburn and Tracy play an older
married couple whose progressiveness is challenged when their daughter
(Katharine Houghton, Hepburn’s real-life niece) brings home a new fiancé, who
happens to be black. Celebrated actor Sidney Poitier plays the young man with
his customary on-screen charisma, fire and grace.
He Who Gets Slapped (1924)
One of the earliest “creepy clown” movies, “He Who Gets
Slapped” was the first film produced completely by the MGM studio, though not the
first released. The film features Lon Chaney in a memorable role as a scientist
who is humiliated when a rival and his wife steal his ideas just as he is to
present them to the Academy of Sciences. He then becomes a masochistic circus
clown where the highlight of his act is being repeatedly slapped. One of many
stand-out scenes occurs during a circus performance where Chaney spots those
who betrayed him and tries to call them out, but his fellow clowns are doing
their normal crowd-pleasing routine of slapping him in the face. Filled with
nightmarish vignettes, this landmark film from the silent era was directed by
Victor Sjöström (newly arrived from Sweden and using an anglicized last name of
Seastrom) and also features Norma Shearer and John Gilbert, each on the cusp of
stardom.
Interior New York Subway, 14th Street to 42nd Street (1905)
This early actuality film documents New York City’s newest
marvel, the subway, less than seven months after its opening. However, the film
is not as simple as it first appears. It required coordinating three trains:
the one we watch, the one carrying the camera and a third (glimpsed on the
parallel track) to carry a bank of lights. The artistic flair is the vision of
legendary cameraman G.W. “Billy” Bitzer.
La Bamba (1987)
“La Bamba” is a biopic of the life of rock star Ritchie
Valens, rock’s first Mexican-American superstar. Directed by Luis Valdez, “La
Bamba” (the film draws its name from Valens’ signature song) charts Valens’
meteoric rise as a musician and his tragic death at age 17 in a 1959 plane
crash, along with Buddy Holly and The Big Bopper. Lou Diamond Phillips stars as
the late Valens. The film’s success not only reinvigorated interest in Valens’
brief but notable musical legacy, it also brought the title tune back to the
charts (in a cover version by Los Lobos) 28 years after its first appearance.
Lives of Performers (1972)
Yvonne Rainer was born in San Francisco in 1934. At a very
young age, Rainer’s father introduced her to films and her mother introduced
her to ballet. She moved to New York in 1956, where she studied dance at the
Martha Graham School while also learning ballet at Ballet Arts. Much like other
choreographers of her era, Rainer sought to blur the stark line separating
dancers from non-dancers. Her work has been described as “foundational across
multiple disciplines and movements: dance, cinema, feminism, minimalism,
conceptual art and postmodernism.” “Lives of Performers” has been characterized
as “a stark and revealing examination of romantic alliances … the dilemma of a
man who can’t choose between two women and makes them both suffer.”
Memento (2000)
This innovative detective-murder, psychological puzzle (and
director Christopher Nolan’s breakthrough film) tells its story in non-linear
stops and starts in order to put the audience in a position approximating the
hero’s short-term amnesia. Guy Pearce tries to avenge his wife’s murder but his
anterograde amnesia forces him to rely on sticky notes, tattoos and Polaroids.
Nolan recounts, “My solution to telling the story subjectively was to deny the
audience the same information that the protagonist is denied, and my approach
to doing that was to effectively tell the story backwards … so the story is
told as a series of flashbacks which go further and further back in time.”
According to Nolan, he frequently intercut between the black-and-white
“objective” sequences and “subjective” sequences in color. The goal was to show
the conflict between how humans see and experience objective versus subjective
and the complex relationship between imagination and memory.
Only Angels Have Wings (1939)
Considered the “quintessential” Howard Hawks male melodrama
by many, “Only Angels Have Wings” stars Cary Grant as the tough-talking head of
a cut-rate air freight company in the Andes. Grant has a dangerous business to
run and spurns romantic entanglements, fearing women blanch at the inherent
danger. Displaced showgirl Jean Arthur arrives and tries to prove him wrong.
Along with sparkling dialogue from Grant, Arthur and renowned character actor
Thomas Mitchell, “Only Angels Have Wings” captivates with dazzling air
sequences featuring landings on canyon rims, ups and downs and perilous flights
through foggy mountain passes.
The Sinking of the Lusitania (1918)
Having virtually established animation as a viable medium
through films such as “Little Nemo” (1911) and “Gertie the Dinosaur” (1914),
newspaper cartoonist Winsor McCay produced this propaganda short (combining
animation, editorial cartoon and live-action documentary techniques) to stir
Americans into action after a German submarine sank the British liner RMS
Lusitania in 1915, killing 1,198 passengers and crew, including 128 Americans.
McCay was upset with the isolationist sentiment present in the country and at
his employer, the Hearst newspapers chain. It took McCay nearly two years
working on his own to produce the film, debuting a year after America entered
the war. Nevertheless, this is a significant film historically and a notable
early example of animation being used for a purpose other than comedy. In his
seminal “American Silent Film,” William K. Everson called the film “a wartime
film that was both anti-German propaganda and an attempt to provide a
documentary reconstruction of a major news event not covered by regular
newsreel cameramen. The incredibly detailed drawings of the Lusitania, intercut
with inserts of newspaper headlines relative to the notable victims, and
strongly-worded editorializing sub-titles concerning the bestiality of the Hun,
make this a fascinating and seldom-repeated experiment.”
Spartacus (1960)
Even among the mega epics being produced by Hollywood at the
time (such as “The Ten Commandments” and “Cleopatra”), “Spartacus” stands out
for its sheer grandeur and remarkable cast (Kirk Douglas, Laurence Olivier,
Jean Simmons, Charles Laughton, Peter Ustinov), as well as for Stanley
Kubrick’s masterful direction. The film is also credited with helping to end
the notorious Hollywood blacklist of the 1950s – its producer, Douglas, hired
then-blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo to author the script, which was based on
a book by another blacklisted author, Howard Fast.
Superman (1978)
Director Richard Donner’s treatment of the famous superhero
was not the first time the character had been on the big screen. Kirk Alyn
played the role back in a 1948 serial and George Reeves appeared in both
theatrical and TV versions in the 1950s. However, for many, Christopher Reeve
remains the definitive Man of Steel. This film, an “origins” story, recounts
Superman’s journey to Earth as a boy, his move from Smallville to Metropolis
and his emergence as a true American hero. Beautiful in its sweep, score and
special effects, which create a sense of awe and wonder, “Superman” — as the
tag line reads — makes you “believe a man can fly.”
Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser (1988)
Charlotte Zwerin’s insightful documentary of the jazz
pianist-composer Thelonious Monk blends together excellent interviews with
those who knew him best and riveting concert performances, many shot in the
1960s by Christian Blackwood. Reviewing the film in The New York Times, Stephen
Holden noted, “Charlotte Zwerin’s remarkable documentary … reminds us again and
again that Monk was as important a jazz composer as he was a pianist.”
Time and Dreams (1976)
Created in 1976 by Mort Jordan, a student at Temple
University, “Time and Dreams” is a unique and personal elegiac approach to the
civil rights movement. The filmmaker has described “Time and Dreams” as a
personal journey back to his Alabama home, where he contrasts two societies:
the nostalgia some residents have for past values versus the deferred dreams of
those who are well past waiting for their time to fully participate in the
promise of their own dreams. Through vignettes and personal testimonies, the
film portrays Greene County, Alabama, as its people move toward understanding
and cooperation in a time of social change.
Titanic (1997)
James Cameron’s epic retold the story of the great maritime
disaster and made mega-stars of both its leads, Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate
Winslet. Their upstairs-downstairs romance transported the audience to another
world and time via spectacular sweeping scenes in the bow of the ship and
beyond. The film cost $200 million to produce, leading many to predict a
historic box office disaster, but “Titanic” became one of the top-grossing
films of all-time and a cultural touchstone of the era. Newsweek’s David Ansen
spoke of how Cameron managed to fulfill expectations for the film: “When
Cameron’s camera pulls back from a closeup of the exuberant DiCaprio at the bow
of the ship and lifts to peer down from the sky at the Titanic passing
majestically underneath, you feel the kind of jaw-dropping delight you felt as a
child overwhelmed by the sheer size of Hollywood’s dreams. ‘Titanic’ is big,
bold, touchingly uncynical filmmaking.”
To Sleep with Anger (1990)
Beginning with his UCLA student film, the austere
neo-realistic “Killer of Sheep,” director Charles Burnett has carved out a
distinctive and exalted niche in American independent cinema. Burnett often
sets his films on a small scale but deftly explores universal themes, including
the power to endure and the rewards and burdens of family. Critic Leonard
Maltin called “To Sleep with Anger” an “evocative domestic drama about the
effect storyteller/trickster (Danny) Glover has on the various members of a
black family. More than just a portrait of contemporary black society, it’s a
story of cultural differences between parents and children of how individuals
learn (or don’t learn) from experience, and of how there should be no place for
those who cause violence and strife.”
Wanda (1971)
Film and TV actress Barbara Loden wrote and directed this
affecting and insightful character study about an uneducated, passive woman
from the coal-mining region of Pennsylvania, where the cinema verite-like film
was shot. The title character possesses critically low self-esteem, leaves her
kids and husband and then drifts aimlessly into a series of one-night stands
and a dangerous relationship with a bank robber. Today, many consider this
low-budget study of loneliness and personal isolation one of the finest works
of independent cinema during the 1970s.
With the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain (1937-1938)
This advocacy documentary about the Lincoln Brigade was shot
during the Spanish Civil War to raise funds for bringing wounded American
volunteers home. Some 2,800 Americans enlisted in the International Brigades to
fight against fascism in defense of the Spanish Republic. The film was directed
by Henri Cartier-Bresson with Herbert Kline and additional photography was
provided by Jacques Lemare and Robert Capa. This film is held at New York
University’s Tamiment Library and is part of a vast collection of materials in
the Abraham Lincoln Brigades Archive.
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