1989 was a year of much retrospection, in the US film industry. There was a glorious special edition of Life magazine with essays about ten of the greatest films of 1939, movie-makers of the day, and a pairing of many of the still-living Great Stars of 1939 with the Great Stars of 1989. (I don’t remember most of them, just that they paired James Stewart with Tom Hanks and Ginger Rogers with Patrick Swayze. She hadn’t seen Dirty Dancing, because she didn’t like the title.) That is also the year that the Library of Congress began the National Film Registry.
Every year, fifteen films are inducted. To be eligible, they must be at least ten years old (I’d make it longer, but no one asked me) and “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” This gives the voting body quite a lot of leeway. The list isn’t limited to features; my absolute favourite inclusion, added to the list in 2000, is the 1957 “Let’s All Go to the Lobby.” I bet you can sing along! Probably quite a lot more people can sing along to the full-length version of “Thriller,” added in 2009. Even various bits of journalistic film or home movies are included; the footage of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse was added in 1998, and a collection listed as “The Nicholas Brothers’ Home Movies,” filmed in the ’30s and ’40s, was added in 2011.
Okay, the registry is often a bit more predictable than that. Of the first fifteen, perhaps the only surprises are Star Wars and the 1969 film The Learning Tree. Three of the films inducted that year were, yes, made in 1939. (Gone With the Wind, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and The Wizard of Oz.) Almost every essential artist in film makes it to that first year, with Hitchcock, Chaplin, Kubrick, Griffith, and Ford being only a few of the directors on the list. And, of course, there is Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
Still, I’m not sure that’s really wrong. The films everyone thinks of first should be on a registry intended to preserve a snapshot of the American people of the era of movie-making. Surely that’s kind of the point. And while every year has a fair number of Classic Films added, every year also has something unusual. I mean, “The Story of Menstruation”? (Added just last year!) After all, it is not merely what we think of first, it is the films we take of ourselves and the films we use to teach that matter.
In fact, I’m rather pleased that it’s possible for the public to nominate films every year. Yes, the ultimate decision is made by the Librarian of Congress. (Currently the Acting Librarian, David S. Mao; nominee Carla D. Hayden is awaiting confirmation.) Yes, the selection committee leans toward college professors. However, the public is actually encouraged to send in nominations—and if your nomination doesn’t make it, send it in again; they start over every year. Perhaps that’s why Star Wars made it in on the first list?
The website, it’s worth noting, is a marvel of functionality. You want the list? You’ve got it. Summaries and often short essays about everything on it? That’s there, too. You can sort by name, by when the film was made, by when it was added to the list. A list of credited people involved with the films? They don’t guarantee it’s exhaustive, but there it is; from 3-D consultant (on House of Wax) to written by. For now, the last name on the list is in fact Quentin Tarantino, for Pulp Fiction. There’s instructions on how to nominate films—and a long list of films not yet on the registry, in case you want to browse that.
If you’re curious as to why this is a thing made possible by Your Tax Dollars at Work (as used to be written on school-owned vans in my school district), you can indirectly credit, or blame, Ted Turner. This was all started as part of the anti-colorization backlash. It’s actually against the law to show or distribute a film that appears on the list that has been substantially altered from its original form, including colorization, without putting a notice up that you’ve done so. Sure, it may take over a year to confirm a Librarian of Congress these days, but in 1989, the government really cared about film!
Still, you have to admire the work they’re doing. I watched a documentary about the whole thing recently, and one of the preservation specialists interviewed told a story about how difficult it was to transfer a copy of some previously-thought-lost film from somewhere in Eastern Europe to the United States, given that it was in fact a large quantity of a highly flammable material. The Library of Congress now has a highly trained staff working to preserve decaying film, something thought of as disposable for decades. It’s still true that an enormous quantity of films will probably be lost forever, but through the Library of Congress, these films will last. Somehow.