The NFR Class of 1991: Everybody Dance Now

September 26^th 1991: The National Film Registry announces its next (and potentially final – more on that later) batch of 25 films for induction. Having just finished watching the last of these 25 for this blog, it’s time to reflect on them as a collective viewing experience. Once again, here is your NFR Class of 1991:

Gertie the Dinosaur (1914 ) [“helped shape modern animation in a number of ways”]

The Italian (1915) [“holds up far better than you’d expect”]

The Poor Little Rich Girl (1917) [“enjoyable, if a bit plodding…surely there’s a more superior Pickford offering out there.”]

Greed (1924) [“I found the history of the film more interesting than the film itself…cinema’s most intriguing puzzle.”]

Sherlock Jr. (1924) [“uproariously funny…cannot be beat in terms of sheer ingenuity.”]

City Lights (1931) [“the perfect Chaplin film…flawless”]

Frankenstein (1931) [“an untouchable iconic moment in American film history, and the standard-bearer of horror movies to come.”]

I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang (1932) [“some great work being done throughout, especially by Paul Muni, but…this movie gets lost in the shuffle.”]

Trouble in Paradise (1932) [“an enjoyable film that holds up well, but not in the same league as some of Lubitsch’s other classics”]

King Kong (1933) [“not one of the untouchables on this list, but…a bona-fide classic.”]

The Prisoner of Zenda (1937) [“an entertaining example of a Classic Hollywood studio adventure…but I’d hardly call it a film essential”]

Tevya (1939) [“worth a watch for film/Yiddish theater buffs, but everyone else can just watch the musical instead.”]

The Blood of Jesus (1941) [“a well-meaning and at times touching expression of a community’s strong Christian faith.”]

The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) [“the greatest sophomore slump in movie history”]

Shadow of a Doubt (1943) [“a well-crafted suspense thriller…terrific underrated Hitchcock.”]

The Battle of San Pietro (1945) [“the first World War II documentary to be included in the National Film Registry, and its frank visuals are still a tough act to follow.”]

My Darling Clementine (1946) [“not the quintessential John Ford western, but serviceable”]

Out of the Past (1947) [ “has all the hallmarks of the great film noirs, but it’s lacking that extra ‘je ne sais quoi’”]

A Place in the Sun (1951) [“What was praised as a quality drama in 1951 comes across as a muddled melodrama in 2023.”]

Gigi (1958) [“sophisticated for its time, but quickly eclipsed”]

Lawrence of Arabia (1962) [“classic filmmaking at its finest…you are in the presence of greatness.”]

David Holzman’s Diary (1967) [“definitely pushes the limits of docufiction…a pass for its inventiveness”]

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) [“arguably THE film experience…an undisputed classic”]

High School (1968) [“a time capsule of a moment in America and…a checkpoint for how far (or not) high school has evolved”]

Chinatown (1974) [“as close to a perfect movie as you can get”]

With this roster of films, we start to see the NFR make a transition of sorts. There’s still plenty of iconic heavy hitters in this round (“King Kong”, “Frankenstein”, “2001”, etc.), but we also start getting more obscure films from outside of Hollywood (“Tevya”, “Blood of Jesus”, “David Holzman’s Diary”). We also start seeing our first repeats, with Chaplin, Keaton, and Lubitsch each getting another film on the list. Most noteworthy for me are films like “I Am a Fugitive…”, “Place in the Sun”, and “Gigi” that may have been obvious choices in 1991 but whose reputations have faded over the last 32 years and probably wouldn’t crack anyone’s top 75 today. Proof that any film’s status as a classic isn’t a permanent designation.

Other notes

The overall thing I noticed with my own writing on these posts is that I include a caveat for almost every movie (It’s great, but…). It’s the beginning of a long run of NFR movies that understandably make the cut based on their reputation or historical importance, but don’t necessarily hold up on a modern viewing.
According to the LA Times’s article about the NFR induction, the initial National Film Preservation Act that kickstarted the Registry expired that month (September 1991). The act was renewed in June 1992, meaning that for a solid nine months these 75 films might have gone down as the only films in the Registry.
At the time of the 1991 announcement, future NFR entry “The Silence of the Lambs” was wrapping up its nearly eight months long theatrical run. “Boyz n the Hood”, and “Thelma & Louise” had finished their runs at this point, and “Beauty and the Beast” would open in November. The sequel to a future NFR entry was number one at the weekend box office: “Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare”.
This year’s double dippers include actors Joseph Cotten, C. Aubrey Smith, and Tim Holt (!), Actor/Director John Huston, screenwriter Michael Wilson, and composers Bernhard Kaun, Alfred Newman, and Dimitri Tiomkin.
This year’s thematic double dippers: Animated protagonists/title characters, extreme historical liberties, love triangles, movies drastically cut without their director’s approval, extended fantasy sequences, roadshows with an intermission, intertitles that spell out accents phonetically, Noir (both original and neo), people lost in the desert, and characters singing “The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo”.
My favorites of my own subtitles: The Least Happy Fella, Who Wants to See a Millionaire?, Thief Encounter, Ape Fear, The Heir Apparent Trap, Fiddle Me This, Secrets & Liz, Ooh-La-Wha?, and [Citation Needed]: The Motion Picture.
A fun bit of useless trivia: According to the film version of “2001”, HAL 9000 was created in January 1992, so he made the NFR four months before he was born!
And finally, because I have no other place to put it, here’s a note I deleted from the “King Kong” post, but it still makes me laugh so I’m including it here. For the scene where Kong rips out part of the el train track, I originally had a fake quote from “12 Angry Men”: “According to the old man’s testimony, the train came roaring by his window, he heard the boy yell at his father ‘I’m going to kill you’, and then the whole track was destroyed by a giant ape.” I know it’s a deep cut, but it still tickles me.