The NFR Class of 1997: MMMBop

Other notes

• We have something very rare with the NFR’s ’97 announcement: TV coverage! C-SPAN filmed and broadcast the Library of Congress’ press conference announcing these inductees, and the recording can be found on C-SPAN’s website. The whole thing is beautifully unpolished, but about as exciting as, well, a press conference. James Billington doesn’t even get to the list until 10 minutes in, and when he does, he rattles off the names and release dates with zero fanfare (He also gets a few names and dates wrong, at one point announcing the induction of “How the West Was Young”). I don’t know if this was the only year the NFR press conference was broadcast, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was. This is also the earliest NFR announcement where I can find a corresponding article on the Library of Congress website. Ah, the early days of the internet.
• In a nice bit of foreshadowing, one of the reporters at the NFR press conference asks about the recent acquisition by Congress of a storage facility in Culpeper, Virginia previously owned by the US Federal Reserve. This facility became the National Audiovisual Conservation Center in 2007 and contains the majority of the Library of Congress’ film, audio, and television collection.
• The Class of 1997 seems to be one of extremes: the smaller movies are intimate, independent character studies, while the bigger movies are grand Hollywood epics, including three Best Picture Oscar winners. In its ninth year of inductees, the NFR’s 1997 selections are all movies that are worthy of recognition, but also definitely ninth round picks, waiting their turn until all the “untouchables” are inducted. Not a bad group at all, but not one of the more remarkable ones either. Regardless, in reviewing my original 25 posts, it’s nice seeing an NFR class that I endorsed across the board with few if any caveats.
• Another rarity on the blog: an NFR movie referencing another NFR movie that was inducted in the same year. In this case, characters in “Secaucus Seven” reference the thumb-breaking scene from “The Hustler”. How retroactively meta.
• When the Class of 1997 was announced, cult favorite “Starship Troopers” was #1 at the US box office. To date, the only future NFR movie in theaters that week was “Eve’s Bayou” (“L.A. Confidential” had just completed its run, and “Titanic” would not begin its box office domination until that December).
• Among this year’s double-dippers: Actors James Stewart, Thelma Ritter, Russ Tamblyn, and Billy Gilbert, cinematographer Karl Struss, composer William Axt, production designer Cedric Gibbons, and visual effects artist A. Arnold Gillespie. James Stewart is one of the rare NFR artists with three entries in a single year (he passed away in July 1997, so that was no doubt on everyone’s mind during the selection process).
• In addition to Stewart’s recent death, the pre-release cut of “The Big Sleep” received a limited theatrical release in 1997, so I’m sure that increased the film’s NFR chances. It also helped that Lauren Bacall was in the news in early 1997 when she received her first (and only) Academy Award nomination.
• This year’s thematic double-dippers: Ensemble character studies, newsreels of tragic events from 1937, James Stewart with a significantly younger woman, treacherous river crossings, anti-fascism, stories in the Middle East, convoluted yet inconsequential murder mysteries, detectives later spoofed in “Murder by Death”, Fokker aircrafts, and pre-code nudity!
• Favorites of my own subtitles: Nick & Nora’s Infinite Jest, Sound and Führer, Paint It Bach, Joey’s Day Out, Now, Voyeur, and OK Boomer: The Motion Picture. Not too many this round, but “Sound and Führer” is one of my all-time favorites.
• More fun with subtitles; My alt “Rear Window” subtitle was “Peeping Jim”, which I also like. One subtitle that I cut was for the Hindenburg Footage: “Oh, The Posterity!” I thought it was funny, but it also seems in bad taste.
• And finally, a joke I cut from my “Return of the Secaucus Seven” post. I initially had a “Title Track” section where I claimed that the film was originally called “Revenge of the Secaucus Seven”. Obviously not true, but if you know you know.

The NFR classes of 1998 and 1999 are coming up back-to-back in a few weeks, as well as movie #750! As always, thanks for reading, and given everything that’s going on these days, please, please keep taking care of each other.