2015 additions to the National Film Registry
The Library of Congress has announced its latest additions to the National Film Registry, its compendium of motion pictures that have been judged to be culturally, aesthetically or historically important and worthy of preservation for future generations. The Registry covers not just Hollywood studio classics and box office hits, but also independent films, documentaries, experimental works, cartoons, music videos, educational and training films, ads, and even home movies, in what is the most democratic, and American, of film lists.
Among this year's additions: Tom Cruise's high-flying 1986 hit about young pilots in the Navy's elite "Top Gun" program.
By CBSNews.com senior producer David Morgan
Fragile Heritage
In addition to spotlighting cinematic achievements of the past, the National Film Registry helps protect our nation's film heritage, by mandating preservation copies of each Registry title be stored at the Library. This is imperative, given the fragility of motion picture film. About 70 percent of films from the early years of cinema are lost - damaged, deteriorated, destroyed by fire, or uncared for by the studios that created them.
This year's additions bring the Registry's total to 675 - a mere fraction of the films produced in America since the late 19th century, but vitally important.
Pictured: A film archivist repairs torn sprocket holes on a 1912 short, "The Skeleton," at the Library of Congress' National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Culpeper, Va.
Click through our gallery to see the latest Registry films:
"Being There"
"I like to watch."
Based on Jerzy Kosinski's novel, this parable about power and the predilection of citizens to read certain qualities onto their leaders is given loony force by Peter Sellers' grandly-understated performance as Chance, a dim-witted gardener obsessed with television who finds himself hailed as a brilliant and profound political sage. Deftly directed by Hal Ashby, "Being There" (1979) co-stars Shirley MacLaine and Oscar-winner Melvyn Douglas. And what could surpass the film's sublime final shot? How about the absurd outtakes of Sellers and the crew cracking up under the end credits?
"Black and Tan"
In the early years of sound films, precursors of music videos, called "soundies," featured popular musical artists in short films, often played in coin-operated "jukeboxes." In his first motion picture appearance, Duke Ellington starred in the 1929 short, "Black and Tan," in which Ellington's music is spun into a tragic tale, set in Harlem, of a young woman who dances herself to death. Directed by Dudley Murphy (the experimental film "Ballet mécanique"), "Black and Tan" captured the Harlem Renaissance with verve and style. In addition to the "Black and Tan Fantasy," the music includes Ellington's "Black Beauty," "The Duke Steps Out," "Cotton Club Stomp" and "Hot Feet." Restored by the Cohen Film Collection.
"Dracula (Spanish Version)"
"Escúchalos. Niños de la noche. ¿Qué música que hacer."
With the advent of sound, American film studios, no longer able to sell movies with translated inter-titles, took a hit in foreign markets. Rather than dubbing Hollywood movies into other languages, Universal Pictures experimented with shooting Spanish-language versions concurrently, using the same sets and crews but with other actors. An early example was "Dracula" (1931). After Bela Lugosi finished shooting the vampire film during the day, a cast of Spanish-speaking actors came out at night to do a foreign-release version that - critics now say - is more technically polished and visually intriguing than Tod Browning's English version (never mind that director George Melford couldn't speak Spanish, or that Carlos Villarias made for a laughably anemic vampire compared to the timeless Lugosi).
And there were other dividends: Mexican actress Lupita Tovar, playing Dracula's main squeeze, was hired at the urging of Universal producer Paul Kohner, who later married her.
"Dream of a Rarebit Fiend"
Winsor McCay's popular comic strip, which ran for a decade in the New York Evening Telegram, inspired this delightful short fantasy by film pioneer Edwin S. Porter, who used clever trick photography - such as double exposures, models, stop-motion and matte paintings - to spin the hallucinatory visions of a glutton (Jack Brawn) who suffers the after-effects of too much Welsh rarebit. Reminiscent of the charming fantasies of Georges Méliès, "Dream of a Rarebit Fiend" (1906) has been preserved by the Museum of Modern Art's Department of Film.
"Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer"
Developed in part as his UCLA thesis film, "Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer" (1975) is Thom Anderson's visual essay on the photographer whose sequential photographs, including images of animal locomotion originally presented on a "zoopraxoscope," were the precursors of modern motion pictures. Narrated by Dean Stockwell, the film incorporates re-animations of Muybridge's pioneering work.
Anderson has since directed the documentaries "Los Angeles Plays Itself," "Red Hollywood," and The Thoughts That Once We Had."
"Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze"
One of the earliest film recordings, and the oldest surviving copyrighted motion picture, nearly didn't survive as a motion picture. A document of Edison engineer Fred Ott's snuff-inspired sneeze, a series of still images was published in Harper's Weekly magazine in March 1894.
Nearly 60 years later, about half of the individual images were re-photographed onto motion picture film for the first time; and just two years ago, the Library of Congress re-animated all 81 frames to 35mm.
"A Fool There Was"
"Kiss me, my fool!"
An upright gentleman is led astray by a vamp on board a trans-Atlantic cruise in "A Fool There Was" (1915), based on a play inspired by a Rudyard Kipling poem. Its star, Theda Bara - advertised as possessing "the most beautifully wicked face in the world" - built a career on playing vamps, while Fox built a studio on her films' success.
Alas, "A Fool There Was," which has been preserved by the Museum of Modern Art's Department of Film, is one of only a handful of Bara's movies that has survived.
"Ghostbusters"
"Who ya' gonna call?"
A pop culture phenomenon, "Ghostbusters" (1984) followed in the wake of brash, goofball comedies such as Bill Murray's "Meatballs," Dan Aykroyd's "The Blues Brothers" and "National Lampoon's Animal House," only this time melding slapstick comedy and superb special effects of the supernatural with one very special effect: Murray's laconic attitude in the midst of chaos.
With New York City's paranormal activities getting out of hand, it takes an enterprising group of parapsychologists to forestall a disaster of Biblical proportions, when a beautiful musician (Sigourney Weaver) is possessed by the demigod Zuul, who is preparing for the destruction of mankind. Leave it to Murray, Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson to round up ancient gods and demonic spirits, even those in the guise of a gigantic marshmallow man.
"Hail the Conquering Hero"
"Well, that's the war for you. It's always hard on women. Either they take your men away and never send them back at all, or they send them back unexpectedly just to embarrass you."
Writer-director Preston Sturges ("Sullivan's Travels," "The Lady Eve," "The Miracle of Morgan's Creek") was a pungent satirist at a time when Hollywood preferred broad, punchy comedies. An Oscar-nominee for Best Original Screenplay, "Hail the Conquering Hero" (1944) follows "war hero" Woodrow Truesmith (Eddie Bracken), the sad sack son of a Marine hero whose discharge for hay fever is spun into a patriotic display of battle-tested courage under fire. With the ever-charming William Demarest, Ella Raines and Franklin Pangborn.
"Humoresque"
A poignant tale of Jewish culture within the immigrant community of New York City's Lower East Side (with examples of acts of anti-Semitism which many tenement dwellers faced), "Humoresque" (1920) is a sympathetic portrait of a young man who, pushed by an excessively nurturing mother, becomes a noted violinist. Though director Frank Borzage's sentimentality may seem unfashionable today, at the time Variety wrote of the film that it "touches the deep places of the heart."
It was the first Medal of Honor winner from Photoplay magazine. Restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive.
"Imitation of Life"
"I wouldn't be caught dead in a colored teachers' college!"
Director Douglas Sirk's stylized and somewhat lurid melodramas - chided at the time as "women's pictures" - were highly-charged tales of thwarted romance and embattled relationships, in which color and emotion were painted with broad strokes. His 1959 remake of "Imitation of Life" starred Lana Turner as an actress whose daughter grows up to become a rival for her lover's affections, while a family friend passing for white is beaten by her boyfriend when he finds out she is biracial.
One critic called this film a "shameless tearjerker," but no less a filmmaker than Rainer Werner Fassbinder called "Imitation of Life" a "great, crazy movie about life and about death. And about America."
Pictured: Lana Turner, Juanita Moore and Karen Dicker.
"The Inner World of Aphasia"
This award-winning 1968 educational film about patients and medical staff coping with aphasia (in which brain injury causes the patient to lose the ability to speak) used innovative artistic techniques to dramatize the sufferer's malady, and continues to serve as a valuable training tool. It's one of hundreds of medical training films by co-directors Naomi Fiel (pictured, as an afflicted nurse celebrating the first success of her recovery) and Edward Feil.
"John Henry and the Inky-Poo"
"History has a way of making big men bigger."
George Pal, who produced stop-motion animated shorts called "Puppetoons" in the 1930s and '40s, had faced criticism over his depiction of African-Americans in his series featuring a black boy named Jasper. He responded with this 1946 Puppetoon about the folk hero John Henry, "a steel-driving man," who engages in a race against a mechanical rail-spike driving machine, the Inky-Poo. Ebony magazine praised the short's depiction of African-American folklore, and for treating its characters with "dignity, imagination, poetry, and love." An Oscar-nominee, the film has been preserved by the UCLA Film & Television Archive.
"L.A. Confidential"
"Off the record, on the QT, and very hush-hush."
A stellar cast and a tight script co-written by Brian Helgeland and director Curtis Hanson (based on the James Ellroy novel) make this film noir shine. Set in 1953, "L.A. Confidential" (1997) delves into the seamy underbelly of the City of Angels as homicide detectives uncover police corruption involving their superiors. With Oscar-winner Kim Basinger as a high-priced call girl, Russell Crowe and Guy Pierce as cops (only one of whom is comfortable with bending the rules), Kevin Spacey, James Cromwell, David Straithairn, Ron Rifkin, and Danny DeVito as a tabloid magazine publisher.
"The Mark of Zorro"
The first swashbuckler featuring silent-screen star Douglas Fairbanks, "The Mark of Zorro" (1920) told the tale of a rapier-wielding masked avenger of the oppressed. Wealthy landowner Don Diego dons the character of Zorro in order to thwart a despotic Mexican Captain and his henchmen. Created by pulp writer Johnston McCulley, Zorro is also out to court the lovely Marguerite De La Motte (Lolita Pulido), who is as enamored by the dashing Zorro as she is put off by the cloddish Don Diego, not realizing they are one and the same.
"The Old Mill"
Directed by Wilfred Jackson, this Disney "Silly Symphony" - about animals inundated by a severe storm threatening to destroy their home in an old windmill - was more than just an impressive display of artistry with cute animals. It also tested new methods of multi-plane animation and effects that created a more three-dimensional feel - techniques which were later used in Disney's landmark feature films, such as "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" and "Fantasia." With music by Leigh Harline, "The Old Mill" won the Oscar for Best Animated Short of 1937.
"Our Daily Bread"
"Don't worry Mary. I know things are hard now, but we'll make it in the end."
"But how, John? Who's going to save us?"
"Not who, Mary -- what. The bread will save us."
In 1934 director King Vidor followed up his critically-acclaimed 1928 feature about urban workers, "The Crowd," with an ode to the American farmer. The earlier film's characters (returning here, but played by different actors) find themselves out of work in the Depression, and so migrate to the farmland to make a living from the soil. But soil needs water, and with a collectivist rallying cry, a cooperative of drought-stricken farm workers irrigates the land, ensuring a bountiful harvest.
Pictured: Karen Morley and Tom Keene in "Our Daily Bread."
"Portrait of Jason"
"Every one in New York has a gimmick, so I found out that mine was hustling."
Shot in 1967, a period predating the gay rights movement spurred by the Stonewall Uprising, this fascinating portrait of a gay hustler and nightclub entertainer Jason Holliday (a.k.a. Aaron Payne) blurs the division between fiction and reality, in Shirley Clarke's quasi-documentary in which interviewer and interviewee become shared subjects in the film. Long thought lost, a 16mm print was discovered at the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research two years ago. It has been restored by the Academy Film Archive, Milestone Films and Modern Videofilm.
"Seconds"
"The question of death selection may be the most important decision in your life."
Director John Frankenheimer has previously tackled paranoia and conspiracy in such classics as "The Manchurian Candidate" and "Seven Days in May." With "Seconds" (1966), he mixed mid-20th century suburban ennui with paranoia about a mysterious corporation that promises a second chance - not only a second life, but a second body. Aging John Randolph finds the promise of youth again in the body of Rock Hudson. But all things come to an end, don't they? And maybe not the end we're expecting. With striking black-and-white cinematography by James Wong Howe (an Oscar nominee) and music by Jerry Goldsmith.
"The Shawshank Redemption"
"Let me tell you something, my friend: Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane."
How did this 1994 period adaptation of a Stephen King story (a non-horror one at that) about men incarcerated in prison, which tanked at the box office, rise to become the number one-ranked film on the Internet Movie Database? Perhaps it's the moving emotional undercurrent of the struggle of banker Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins), falsely convicted for murdering his wife and her lover, to survive the psychic torture and deprivations behind prison walls while fighting to clear his name. Or his deepening friendship with the inmate Red (Morgan Freeman), who himself is rejected for release by the parole board time and time again. Or it's the meticulous planning of Dufresne to pull off an unheard-of escape from the Shawshank State Penitentiary, lorded over by a duplicitious, Bible-spouting warden (Bob Gunton). It's all of these things, plus the camerawork of Roger Deakins and music by Thomas Newman.
Nominated for seven Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Supporting Actor (Freeman), "The Shawshank Redemption" is a compelling tale of rebirth from within a facility where no hope should be expected to survive.
"Sink of Swim"
"On her tenth birthday, the girl's sister gave her a diary with a green cloth cover. It came with a lock and a small key, which she hid carefully under the bed. On the first page she scrawled a large note that declared: 'If anybody reads this diary, they are very mean. It is personal!'
"For the most part, the girl filled it with stories about doing punishment assignments, fighting with the boys, and playing with her friends. Because she didn't write every day, there were still empty pages left when her parents told her they were getting a divorce."
In "Sink or Swim" (1990), Su Friedrich's avant-garde tone poem, 26 short vignettes told in voiceover relate the autobiographical story of a teenage girl, the father consumed by his career, and the emotional damage done to his daughter.
"The Story of Menstruation"
No Disney princesses here: an animated educational film commissioned by the makers of Kotex, "The Story of Menstruation" (1946) was produced by the Educational and Industrial Film Division of the Disney Studio, to be distributed free to schools and girls' clubs. The movie sought to replace a young girl's embarrassment over her menstrual cycle with "a healthy, normal attitude." Nearly 100 million American women would view the film between 1946 and the late 1960s.
"Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One"
"What I have to do is walk slow but look like I'm walking fast. I don't know how to do that."
The actors aren't the only ones questioning what the director (William Greaves) is trying to accomplish during their shoot in New York City's Central Park. Beyond the curious onlookers and policemen, the film's crewmembers themselves believe the director is lost. In this experimental meta-documentary, actors auditioning for a film go through a dramatic scene of a couple's breakup, captured in intense closeup by one camera, and the entire scene captured by a second camera, while a third crew captures the second crew in action. But what is the director's real agenda? After four days of scrums, the crew argues in secret, convinced Greaves is lost, and the rest of the shoot becomes a test of wills between an auteur filmmaker and a collective of cinema buffs.
Though Greaves (an actor, documentary filmmaker and Emmy-winning executive producer of the public TV series, "Black Journal") shot "Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One" in 1968, the film was little-seen until the 1990s, when filmmaker Steven Soderbergh and actor Steve Buscemi backed a revival, along with a sequel, "Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take 2½," which debuted in 2003.
"Top Gun"
"I feel the need ... the need for speed!"
After his star-making turn in "Risky Business," Tom Cruise was launched into the stratosphere of Hollywood with this slickly pulsating paean to Navy pilots. Directed by Tony Scott, "Top Gun" (1986) tailed the Navy's most elite fighter pilot students as they pass through the Top Gun school at Naval Air Station Miramar. With Anthony Edwards, Val Kilmer, civilian instructor Kelly McGillis ("Witness"), and a hard-popping soundtrack which included the Academy Award-winning Best Song, "Take My Breath Away."
"Winchester '73"
"Hunting for food, that's all right. Hunting a man to kill him? You're beginning to like it."
"That's where you're wrong. I don't like it. Some things a man has to do, so he does 'em."
In "Winchester '73" (1950), the first of his five memorable Westerns with director Anthony Mann, James Stewart stars as a cowboy and marksman on a quest to retrieve his stolen titular rifle, which passes from one owner to the next (usually from their cold, dead hands). Costarring Shelley Winters, Rock Hudson, Tony Curtis, Dan Duryea, Millard Mitchell and Will Geer.
"The Shawshank Redemption"
"Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies."
For more info:
National Film Registry (Library of Congress)
National Film Preservation Foundation
By CBSNews.com senior producer David Morgan