by Matt Allen Rewis

Created on: July 03, 2007

NO :

In 1997, in celebration of the 100 year anniversary of motion pictures, AFI released their "100 Years, 100 Movies" list. This list was compiled of the top 100 American films produced from 1896 to 1996, as voted on by "a blue-ribbon panel of leaders from across the film community."

As a film student a few years ago, this original list was introduced to me by one of my instructors. He told me, and my fellow students, that this list should be printed and carried in our back pockets at all times, because this list represented the finest examples of everything we should study, cherish, and strive to accomplish in our own careers. For all intents and purposes, this list was to become our Holy Bible. It was stressed that we should make it a point to seek out and watch every film on that list, which would be the best form of "film school" we could hope for.

Thanks to "Netflix", I was able to do just that. Prior to my enlightenment of these films, I was pretty much self-subjugated only to films from my generation. This list opened my eyes to an amazing group of films that I possibly would have never seen, of which many became my favorites of all time - ("Sunset Boulevard", "Casablanca", "Chinatown", "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", "Raging Bull", I could go on and on ....) As an independent writer/filmmaker now, I owe everything to these films and the enlightenment I gained by seeing them.

But now, for the 10th Anniversary of the original 1997 list, AFI has unveiled a new, updated list of the top 100 American films of all time. The list was to be an adjustment to the original, working in the eligible films of the last 10 years. When I first heard that this list was coming, I was really curious and excited. By now, the original list had become, for me and many film students and enthusiasts across America, the written-in-stone LIST, not to be sacrilegiously challenged or questioned.

So when the 10th Anniversary list was unveiled, I was surprised, and disappointed, to find that the original list had been basically expunged! My impression was that the original list would stay the same, only with the top-voted films of the last 10 years weeded into the list in the appropriate spots, with the lowest films of the original list being accordingly knocked off. But instead, I discovered that the original list was completely re-voted and scrambled.

Now, before I go further, I want to point out that I do understand, with dismay, why this was done. Obviously, it would be inaccurate

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