Rosebud

The American Film Institute’s annual list of the Top 100 Films of all time came out this week and Citizen Kane was on top again. Casablanca, my favorite movie of all time, slipped from #2 to #3.

James Stewart and Robert DeNiro are the actors with the most films on the list, at five each. Director Steven Spielberg has five films on the list; director Alfred Hitchcock is tied with Stanley Kubrick and Billy Wilder at four films each.

I love movies, although I have to admit that I’ve missed most of the movies released since the turn of the century. It’s a lack of time thing, not a lack of interest.

But many of my favorite movies are films I saw during my “formative” years (1960s and 1970s) and many other older films I first saw in the late 1970s when I lived a few blocks from a theatre that regularly screened the classics.

Citizen Kane is a great movie but I wonder if it’s always #1 because of its impact on the look and feel of film more than its story line or acting. Maybe it’s on top because no one thought a 25-year-old first-time filmmaker could make such an amazing movie. I studied it in a high school film club and have only seen it start-to-finish one time since.

Casablanca, on the other hand, is a movie I’ve seen more than 25 times all the way through and dozens of times in pieces, stumbling upon it while channel surfing. I own the 50th anniversary edition VCR and plan to buy the same thing on DVD.

There are many reasons someone can like Casablanca … the acting, the memorable lines, the character development, the interconnection of parallel story lines. I like it because it is the story of a guy who lost the love of his life, spent many bitter years letting that loss turn him into an outwardly bitter man with no direction in life who inwardly helped other people find their way, who found the love of his life again, loved her so much he arranged for her to escape to a better life with the man she really loves and in the process rediscovered meaning in his life. Or something like that.

Another movie I’d rank in my personal top 10 is Cool Hand Luke. That 1967 movie was part of a trend of movies that did not have especially happy endings. Yet the main character had what could be viewed as a positive affect on the lives of many people around him, even though he felt his own life was pointless. I saw that movie when it first came out and have seen it at least 5 or 6 times since. Cool Hand Luke is not on the AFI Top 100 list.

Other movies from that era that are personal favorites are on the list, including Bonnie & Clyde and In The Heat Of The Night.

Movies with meaning always impress me but I also have seen all of the Lethal Weapon and Die Hard movies repeatedly. There is no real social commentary or meaning in any of them, other than a story about the lengths someone will go to get the bad guy. But they’re fun to watch. And they are not on the AFI Top 100 list.

Enough about me.

Here is the Top 10 list. How many have you seen? Are any of them on your favorites list?

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

The whole list is available on the AFI site if you register, or on any number of articles about the list found in a Google search.

Today might be a good day for me to buy a movie on the list that I’ve never seen or to sign up for NetFlix.



AFI, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.