The AFI presented its choices for the best of the best Casablanca and Gone with the Wind top the list
When I'd first heard that the next top 100 list from the American Film Institute was going to be titled "100 Years... 100 Passions", the first and only film that entered my mind for the number one spot was Casablanca. So I was happy to see last night that the panel of voters (which is comprised of film artists, critics, historians and film executives) was in total agreement.
Casablanca is great for so many reasons: its technical excellence, strong performances, a great musical score and a legendary screenplay. The real timelessness of the film, however, comes from its passionate love story, based on a triangle where one of the three participants has to give for any resolution to occur. Yes, Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman nearly set the screen on fire in every one of their scenes, but it is Casablanca's ending that demonstrates a deep understanding of what love is all about. Bogart's character Rick has managed to fall for the woman he loves a second time and must let her go. No film since then has managed to convey both a romance of epic proportions and juggle it with the tragic demands love can make.
The rest of the top 10 seems a little confused. There's no question that #2's Gone With the Wind, #5's An Affair to Remember, #6's The Way We Were and #8's It's A Wonderful Life are all apt choices. However, I can't see why West Side Story entered the top 10, let alone snagged the #3 spot. It's a fine musical, worthy of the top 30 perhaps, but this is an egregiously high ranking. Those who know me will also relate to my disappointment that the bland Doctor Zhivago received the #7 spot. Perhaps most confusing of all is Charlie Chaplin's City Lights, which weighed in at #10. It is a heartbreakingly beautiful movie, and I do like it, but why it's even in the top 50 is beyond me.
The biggest upset -- or perhaps surprise -- is that Woody Allen's masterpiece Annie Hall didn't even make the top 10. I had assumed it would hit #3 or #4 at the very worst. It was given the #11 spot, behind the 1970 tearjerker Love Story, which snuck in at #9. How do movies like Double Indemnity (#84) and Bonnie and Clyde (#65) even make the top 100? When I think of the great screen couples and the best romances, they certainly don't enter my mind. Then again, neither do Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf (#89), Vertigo (#18), The Graduate (#52) or A Streetcar Named Desire (#67), but they all seemed to be included; probably more for their representations of lust and desire than true love. And I still maintain that The English Patient (#56) is not a passionate movie, and any story that romanticizes a wife cheating on a husband whenever they can find the time may thrill some people, but it is not the stuff of great screen relationships.
There are some pleasant additions to the list. The Princess Bride (#88), Reds (#55), On Golden Pond (#22), Marty (#64), and Roxanne (#72) are all drastically different variations of the concept of romance and I'm glad they were all included. It was nice to see recent films such as Jerry Maguire (#100) and Shakespeare in Love (#50). In fact, they should probably have been ranked a little higher than they actually were.
As always, the biggest conundrum is what titles do you leave out, and this year there were some doozies. Rocky and Some Like It Hot demanded to be there, and I can't understand why they didn't make the cut. Some of my own personal preferences would have included Leaving Las Vegas, Carmen, The Remains of the Day, Forrest Gump, The Blue Lagoon, Children of a Lesser God, Superman (1 or 2), Cyrano de Bergerac, Legends of the Fall, Splash, and As Good As It Gets, which is probably still my favourite romantic comedy from the past twenty years.
All in all, I was impressed at the percentage of black and white movies on the list and also surprised at how many titles from the list that I'd actually seen before. Does this make me a romantic at heart? I dunno. Anyways, it will definitely be fun to view some of the movies that ranked high which I haven't seen yet.
As a postscript, I don't understand how people like John Leguizamo and Jennifer Love Hewitt get interviewed to give their feedback for the AFI special. Last time, for the 100 Thrills special, they showed clips from Lucy Liu. Lucy Liu, man. She'd say things like "Speed is such a great movie because you know that the bus cannot slow down," or "I really liked this movie because it was suspenseful." What a waste of airtime and space. The only reason they showed interviews with Jennifer Love Hewitt was because she recently played Audrey Hepburn in a movie. Now she's supposedly an expert on Hepburn's repertoire. Whatever.
