The Library of Congress has made its annual announcement of the 25 films to be added to the Library’s National Film Registry, and as in years past, the films are a combination of modern favorites and older classics ranging from the Charley Chase silent comedy short Mighty Like The Moose (1926) and the all-star cast drama Grand Hotel (1932) to the Steve McQueen crime drama Bullitt (1968) and 1985’s science-fiction comedy Back To The Future.
Also included on this year’s list are the noir’s In A Lonely Place (1950) and The Naked City (1948), the western The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), the Walt Disney cartoon The Three Little Pigs (1933), Algonquin Roundtable member Robert Benchley’s comedy short The Sex Life Of The Polyp (1928) and the musical Oklahoma! (1950).
“Even as Americans fill the movie theaters to see the latest releases, few are aware that up to half the films produced in this country before 1950—and as much as 90 percent of those made before 1920—are lost forever,” said Librarian of Congress James H. Billington, in a press release. “The National Film Registry seeks not only to honor these films, but to ensure that they are preserved for future generations to enjoy.”
Under the terms of the National Film Preservation Act of 1992, each year the Librarian of Congress, with advice from the National Film Preservation Board, names 25 films to the National Film Registry to be preserved for all time based on their “culturally, historically or aesthetically” significance.
The films on the Registry range from silent classics Intolerance (1919) and It (1927) to popular blockbusters like Star Wars (1977) and Raiders Of The Lost Ark (1981) to historically important film footage such as the Hindenburg Disaster Newsreel Footage (1937) and Abraham Zapruder’s infamous home movie footage of the John F. Kennedy assassination. The complete list of films on the National Film Registry can be found here.
The complete list of films added to the Registry this year is as follows-
- Back To The Future (1985)
- Bullitt (1968)
- Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
- Dance, Girl, Dance (1940)
- Dances With Wolves (1990)
- Days of Heaven (1978)
- Glimpse of the Garden (1957)
- Grand Hotel (1932)
- The House I Live In (1945)
- In a Lonely Place (1950)
- The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
- Mighty Like a Moose (1926)
- The Naked City (1948)
- Now, Voyager (1942)
- Oklahoma! (1955)
- Our Day (1938)
- Peege (1972)
- The Sex Life of the Polyp (1928)
- The Strong Man (1926)
- Three Little Pigs (1933)
- Tol’able David (1921)
- Tom, Tom the Piper’s Son (1969-71)
- 12 Angry Men (1957)
- The Women (1939)
- Wuthering Heights (1939)
