Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

In 1998, the American Film Institute issued its highly controversial list of the 100 greatest American films. These films were chosen not so much for the box-office receipts they garnered as for their aesthetic quality, intellectual content, and influence on audiences and filmmakers. Of the top four films, three were produced before 1945. They included, as one might expect from its perennial inclusion on everyone's list of the greatest films of all time, Orson Welles's structurally complex and technically brilliant Citizen Kane (1941) at number one, Hollywood's romantic classic Casablanca (1942) at number two, and that grandiose epic of the Civil War and Reconstruction, Gone With the Wind (1939), at number four. What might have come as a bit of a surprise was that the third-ranked film, and the only one produced after 1945, was Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather (1972) (American Film Institute). What made The Godfather 's inclusion among the top four films significant was how different in tone and content it was from the films that preceded and succeeded it on the all-time greatest list. Citizen Kane, Casablanca , and Gone With the Wind , despite their differences in time period, characters, and themes, were all produced during the heyday of the old studio system (1920–60), and despite their dark moments, usually left one, at their conclusion, with some bit of hope ... log in or subscribe to read full text