After viewing the American Film Institute's 100 Best American Movies show, I thought, in what only can be regarded as a monumental bit of hubris, that it would be interesting to compile my own "improved" version of the list. In fact, I'm in considerable agreement with the actual winners. I'd even put their winner (Citizen Kane) and the runner-up (Casablanca) in the same positions. And, though I might quibble with the rank order, only two in the top 25 don't make my best 100 list. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest at #20 is a close call. #25 (E.T. The Extraterrestial ), on the other hand, is a film I'd like to see removed from the list with the aid of powerful explosives.
After compiling my original list, a few friends who probably know my taste in movies as well or better than I do called me on a few of my choices. Upon further consideration, I had to agree that I had included a few films that are "supposed" to be on any "great films" list but that I had always admired more because I was expected to than because I really did. In addition, I decided to split out the silents on my list into a separate category. There are some silent films I truly enjoy or admire or both, but silents are almost a distinct medium and can't really be considered based on the same criteria as "talkies."
I'm sure my criteria differ from the AFI's. I've deleted or substituted for films that may have been important culturally or historically but just aren't my favorites. So, I've taken off The Jazz Singer (the first talkie) and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (the first feature length animation). I've included at least one unnominated film (Breaker Morant) which may have failed the AFI's "significant American content" test. I've deleted films which had cultural (Jaws) or societal (Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, To Kill a Mockingbird) significance but that I just don't especially like. And finally, I've spread out the honors some. Charlie Chaplin, for example, made some great films but he hardly deserves three in the top 100.
This last point highlights one of the great difficulties with lists of this sort whether compiled by a single person or by a vote. Is the list strictly the 100 best or is it a representative sample of, say, the 125 best? My list is closer to the latter. I could have included any of a number of Woody Allen's movies though only Annie Hall is on the list. (For the record Manhattan, Play It Again Sam, and Crimes and Misdemeanors are favorites.) Any number of grand epics such as Spartacus, The Ten Commandments, or The Last Emperor would have joined the list had it not been for Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, and Bridge On the River Kwai.
I'm not sure about the AFI's list since there's evidence both ways. The AFI does include both Godfather and Godfather II. (Both are great films and I left both in though personally I think Godfather II is the better. In any case, I'd never rank either close to #3 as the AFI did with The Godfather.) And there were the aforementioned three Chaplins to say nothing of a LOT of Hitchcocks.
Other choices look more like selecting a best work. So the Marx Brothers get Duck Soup but not Night At the Opera. Woody Allen gets Annie Hall but not any of a variety of other films. D.W. Griffith gets Birth of a Nation but not Intolerance. The Big Sleep could have substituted for The Maltese Falcon.
The overall mix of my list is also different in some respects. I've lightened up the list a bit with favorite comedies that are under-represented in the AFI's version just as they often are at the Oscars. I've cut back considerably on the Westerns - only High Noon, which is really an anti-Western Western remains. I've substituted a related and superior film, Bride of Frankenstein, for AFI's "token" horror film (Frankenstein) without adding any from another genre I don't especially care for. As for science fiction, our lists are pretty much a wash. I deleted two enormously popular Spielberg SF films which I never thought much of (E.T. and Close Encounters) and added two films (Brazil and Blade Runner) that are much superior even if they were not 100% successful at bringing highly ambitious material to life. I also added The Empire Strikes Back to Star Wars. I still remember the jaw-dropping impact of Star Wars when it debuted, an impact difficult to appreciate today. So it stays. But Empire is the better film. Finally, I added Forbidden Planet, the best of the fifties science fiction films and one that is still eminently watchable. Apocalypse Now is a surrealistic work of art high on my list from before it became fashionable to think it great, but the other Vietnam War movies, Platoon and The Deer Hunter, are off. (The latter was a close call; the former not.)
One final category I found problematic is highly faithful adaptations of plays. I've included a couple such as Arsenic and Old Lace and Inherit the Wind while excluding others such as The Importance of Being Earnest that I felt were essentially filmed plays and derived their character almost exclusively from the brilliance of the underlying written material.
Enough rambling. My list is in alphabetical order because, while I have a few favorites, I couldn't see numerically comparing movies in vastly different categories. After all, where does a great epic like Lawrence of Arabia stack up relative to a wonderful romantic comedy like The Philadelphia Story (to say nothing of an Animal House)? Except where noted, my selections were from the 400 nominees from which the AFI winners were chosen (write-ins were allowed on the ballot). In keeping with the AFI rules, my selections also do not include films later than 1996. (In spite of its flaws, I would probably include Titanic from among more recent films.)
GENERAL, THE (1927)GOLD RUSH, THE (1925)INTOLERANCE (1916)MODERN TIMES (1936)SAFETY LAST (1923)THIEF OF BAGDAD, THE (1924)Metropolis (1926) clearly belongs on any list of great silents but it's not an American film.
Final oddity. The AFI's web site notes the underrepresentation of 1980's films on the final list. My list boosts the number considerably even while removing two selected eighties films and adding as many write-in's as films from the nominated list.