Citizen Kane still No 1 movie
2007-06-21 12:34
Los Angeles - Citizen Kane, Orson
Welles' powerful portrait of an unscrupulous media baron, beat
back an assault from The Godfather, on Wednesday to retain
its title as the greatest American film.
Film critics, historians and experts voted Kane as the
top US film for the second time in a decade in a poll
conducted by the American Film Institute.
The results were
revealed in a three-hour CBS special 100 Years, 100 Movies,
10th Anniversary Edition.
The Godfather, which ranked third in the original poll of
100 great films a decade ago. moved up a notch to second place
while Casablanca slipped to number three.
Also in the top 10 were a surprising Raging Bull at
number four, up 20 places from a decade ago. Singin' in the
Rain was in fifth place, Gone With The Wind was sixth
followed by Lawrence of Arabia, Schindler's List, Vertigo
and The Wizard of Oz.
'American film reflects and defines who we are'
Vertigo, the Hitchcock film starring James Stewart, rose
to 9th place after placing 61st in the original poll.
"American film has always reflected and, in many respects,
defined who we are," said AFI president and chief executive
Jean Picker Firstenberg.
She credited the spreading popularity of the DVD with
spurring interest in silent films and in often neglected
masterpieces like John Ford's The Searchers, which went from
96 on the original list to 12 this year.
For the first time, DW Griffith's silent masterpiece
Intolerance was voted onto the list as was Buster Keaton's
The General while Charlie Chaplin's poignant City Lights
rose from 76 to 11 on the list.
But Griffith's racist 1915 film Birth of a Nation fell
off the list entirely because of its now unpopular ideology,
despite its history of technical innovations.
Other new additions
Of the 43 newly eligible films released from 1996 to 2006,
only Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (50),
Saving Private Ryan (71), Titanic (83) and The Sixth
Sense (89) made the cut.
Other new additions to the list include Cabaret (63),
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (67), The Shawshank
Redemption (72), All The President's Men (77), Spartacus,
(81) and A Night at the Opera(85).
Among those films that did not make the list were:
Fantasia, Doctor Zhivago, Birth of a Nation, The Jazz
Singer, My Fair Lady, From Here to Eternity and An
American in Paris.
AFI film historian Pat Hansen said it seemed that musicals
took the biggest hit. "Musicals seemed out of favour and were
replaced by more popular films like Titanic and Saving
Private Ryan," she said.
- Reuters