The Library of Congress announced the selections early Tuesday. The goal of the registry, which began in 1989, isn’t to identify the best movies ever made, but to preserve films with artistic, cultural or historical significance.
Librarian of Congress James H. Billington has chosen each of the films in the registry, culling them from suggestions by the National Film Preservation Board and the public. More than 2,100 films were nominated by the public in 2010.
Original copies of films picked for the registry are kept safe and available for viewing by future generations. The library acquires copies to preserve in its cold-storage vaults among millions of other recordings at the Packard Campus of the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Virginia.
Film can rapidly deteriorate if improperly stored. About half the films produced before 1950 and 90 per cent of those made before 1920 have been lost, Billington said.
This year’s selections also include “Saturday Night Fever,” John Badham’s 1977 disco musical starring Travolta as Tony Manero, the working-class youth known for his impressive moves on the dance floor at a Brooklyn nightclub.
It’s one of five selections from the 1970s. The others are Robert Altman’s revisionist Western “McCabe & Mrs. Miller;” William Friedkin’s horror classic “The Exorcist;” ”All the President’s Men,” Alan J. Pakula’s adaptation of the book by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, and “Grey Gardens,” a documentary about Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’ eccentric relatives.
Full list here.
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