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The Library of Congress announced the addition of 25 more movies to the National Film Registry, bringing the total up to 600 titles. This year’s additions include home movies, actualities, documentaries, industrials, a fight film, and experimental titles along with the usual mix of Hollywood features old and new. New to the Registry: itinerant filmmaker Melton Barker, who enlisted local children into shorts that have been collected under the umbrella The Kidnappers Foil; Bob Clark, who wrote and directed the holiday perennial A Christmas Story based on Jean Shepherd’s reminiscences; Delmer Daves, who directed the Elmore Leonard-based 3:10 to Yuma; and Penny Marshall, the former television star who directed A League of Their Own. Returnees to the Registry include Don … More →

My latest piece for The Atlantic, “With 35mm Film Dead, Will Classic Movies Ever Look the Same Again?”, describes the problems repertory theaters are facing in trying to schedule film prints—not digital versions—of classic movies. I’ve been reporting on the transition from film to digital for over a year now. The pros and cons of the formats have become moot as film slides faster and faster into a niche category. But as someone who has worked in and around movies for thirty years, I am astonished at how quickly the movie industry has shifted. Last December I talked to director Alexander Payne about competing formats in “Thinking About the End of Film.” “Flicker is better than glow,” was his conclusion, … More →

From now through January 25, the National Film Preservation Foundation is offering you the opportunity to stream, for free, what survives from The White Shadow (1924). Directed by Graham Cutts and starring Betty Compson and Clive Brook, this moody, convoluted melodrama is also the earliest extant credit for Alfred Hitchcock. Twenty-four-years old, he was credited as art director and assistant director. More important, he wrote the screenplay and edited the film. I wrote about the rediscovery of The White Shadow earlier in “Behind the Lost Hitchcock Film.” But although the surviving elements—about forty minutes, roughly the first half of the story—have been preserved, the film itself has not been easy to see. Now, thanks to the NFPF, Fandor, and the … More →

Next Wednesday, October 24, I will be hosting a program of six short films selected from the National Film Registry at the Cinema Arts Centre at Huntington, Long Island. This program indicates some of the breadth of the National Film Registry. The six shorts we will be showing span the years 1906–1996, and include an actuality, two animated shorts, a documentary, an amateur film, and an experimental film. The shorts are both silent and sound, B&W and color, and were filmed on 35mm and 16mm. We’re very lucky to have Ben Model, who will accompany two of the silent films on piano. A Trip Down Market Street (12 min) 1906 – 35mm In the first years of cinema, filmmakers traveled … More →