America's Film Legacy is a guide to the most significant films ever made in the United States. Unlike opinionated "Top 100" and arbitrary "Best of" lists, these are the real thing: groundbreaking films that make up the backbone of American cinema. Some are well-known, such as Citizen Kane, The Jazz Singer, All Quiet on the Western Front, The Birth of a Nation, and Boyz n the Hood. Others are more obscure, such as Blacksmith Scene, The Blue Bird, The Docks of New York, Star Theatre, and A Bronx Morning. Daniel Eagan's beautifully written and authoritative book is for anyone who loves American movies and who wants to learn more about them.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. The great, the historic, and the lousy (but, alas, influential) all find their place in this engrossing survey of titles selected by the Library of Congress's National Film Registry. Eagan (HBO's Guide to Movies on Videocassette and Cable TV) chronologically catalogues 500 Registry films, from 1893's 30-second Blacksmithing Scene to 1995's Fargo, jumbling Hollywood classics together with obscure art films, cartoon shorts, documentaries, industrial and student films, newsreel footage from the Hindenburg disaster and the Zapruder film. Each entry includes complete cast and credits lists and an engaging one- to two-page historical and interpretive essay. These are packed with biographical thumbnails of actors and directors and making-of narratives-from screenplay rewrites to on-set feuds and hysterics to final-cut showdowns-that buffs and scholars will delight in. Eagan dutifully assesses the artistic merits of each film (yes, even Animal House) in critiques that abound in pithy and sometimes contrarian opinions: he rates Clint Eastwood rather higher than either Orson Welles (Citizen Kane is, merely, "a delightful stunt with the appeal of an eager puppy") or the "glib, cruel" Robert Altman. The result is an erudite, perceptive, always entertaining cinematic encyclopedia. Photos.
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
Review
"I've always thought of my films as a kind of private history, a record of things that interested me, music, people, events, sometimes politics. They allowed me to watch like a cat, and not have to be a reporter. What made it risky was not explaining anything. When I got rid of the script and the narration in the early films, and went out hunting for films with a camera they were seen as sort of dicey and unorthodox and unfortunately for us, unsaleable, at least to TV. That was what got us into theaters.
I really welcome the existence of the National Film Registry and Daniel Eagan's wonderful book—America's Film Legacy—about it. The NFR's determination to collect these early experimental works and not let them disappear is really collecting and preserving the history of our times. I believe that films will eventually be our most important artifact. They may well become a new language."
-D.A. Pennebaker
"This valuable and highly readable book will serve equally well as a primer for newcomers to film history and a refresher course for more experienced viewers on the vast spectrum of American cinema. Best of all, it will introduce novices and veterans alike to a number of offbeat and unjustly-forgotten titles on the National Film Registry."
-Leonard Maltin
"A book on the National Film Registry will be a wonderful asset."
-Leonard Kamerling, co-director, The Drums of Winter
"Daniel Eagan informs as well as entertains in this lively, opinionated reference guide to a treasure trove of cinema history in the Library of Congress's National Film Registry."
-John Canemaker
America's Film Legacy is a brilliant, insightful and invaluable breakthrough book which makes American film history and the men and women — both the legendary and the all but unknown — who created it, come to life in fresh and vivid detail. This superb book offers a startling and wise appreciation of the essence of their film achievements.
—Terry Sanders, Two-time Academy Award-winning filmmaker
"America's Film Legacy is a brilliant, insightful and invaluable breakthrough book which makes American film history and the men and women —both the legendary and the all but unknown—who created it, come to life in fresh and vivid detail. This superb book offers a startling and wise appreciation of the essence of their film achievements."
-Terry Sanders, Filmmaker
"The opportunity to revisit and be inspired by the past is one of the purposes behind the National Film Registry. The 1915 film The Italian was preserved from a single paper copy, and had that been done at the time I made The Godfather, I would have enjoyed having access to it. I'm proud that The Godfather and The Godfather Part II join The Italian on the Registry, an attempt to preserve our cinematic heritage. America's Film Legacy doesn't just explore the films on the Registry, it ties together the past and the present, showing how the great movies of today can be built on the those of an earlier era."
Francis Ford Coppola
"The Library of Congress' National Film Registry is the most important list today in the recognition of American film as art, entertainment and cultural history. Daniel Eagan's America's Film Legacy is the first book on this subject and it is essential reading for anyone wanting to know the remarkable breadth of accomplishment throughout the 120 years of the history of the cinema. Every film fan and every library should have a copy of this book."
-Dennis Doros, Co-founder and VP, Milestone Film & Video
"America's Film Legacy is a valuable guide to the films chosen to represent the range, style, and diversity of subject matter of American cinema."
-Frederick Wiseman, Documentary Filmmaker
"Want a definitive list of the most significant U.S. movies? A panel of experts convened by the Library of Congress has chosen 500, from Citizen Kane to Duck and Cover. Daniel Eagan's lucid analysis of these works provides a comprehensive film history in one volume."
-TIME Magazine
The great, the historic, and the lousy (but, alas, influential) all find their place in this engrossing survey of titles selected by the Library of Congress's National Film Registry. Eagan chronologically catalogues 500 Registry films, from 1893's 30-second Blacksmithing Scene to 1995's Fargo, jumbling Hollywood classics together with obscure art films, cartoon shorts, documentaries, industrial and student films, newsreel footage from the Hindenburg disaster and the Zapruder film. Each entry includes complete cast and credits lists and an engaging one- to two-page historical and interpretive essay. These are packed with biographical thumbnails of actors and directors and making-of narratives—from screenplay rewrites to on-set feuds and hysterics to final-cut showdowns—that buffs and scholars will delight in. Eagan dutifully assesses the artistic merits of each film (yes, even Animal House) in critiques that abound in pithy and sometimes contrarian opinions... The result is an erudite, perceptive, always entertaining cinematic encyclopedia.
-Publishers Weekly [STARRED REVIEW]
"The wide range of important films in the Registry makes it a terrific starting point for anyone wishing to study the history of American cinema (as well as an excellent refresher course for veteran film buffs), and journalist and researcher Daniel Eagan's America's Film Legacy provides a lively guide to the collection.
...[Eagan's capsule histories] are riveting and extremely addicting — it is very easy to open the book looking for information on one film and then get lost for hours browsing among the various titles. Yet the book is best read from beginning to end because Eagan's expertise as a film scholar is so vast; he constantly refers back and forth across the Registry to show the ways various careers, genres and technologies evolve, and to read his book as a continuous narrative is to grasp the history of American cinema as a whole.
America's Film Legacy is as vital and indispensable a compendium as Andrew Sarris' The American Cinema or David Thomson's A Biographical Dictionary of Film; in fact, in its breadth of scholarship is far superior to the others.
As the National Film Registry continues to grow with each passing year, one hopes Eagan will update his guide, broadening and deepening its overview of American film history. Already, America's Film Legacy is one of the most complete and entertaining works of its kind and a recommended addition to the library of any cinema fan."
-American Cinamatographer
For each film he provides a critical essay, fundamental facts and figures, and relevant information about archival sources and availability, which is crucial for any student or film buff who wants to take the next step and see the film in question. ...Eagan has done his homework well, and brings his own critical eye to each article. A generous 818 pages long, America's Film Legacy is a worthy survey of our homegrown film culture, as expressed by the selections of the National Film Registry; it also makes for good reading.
-Leonard Maltin, www.leonardmaltin.com
"This weighty volume catalogs 500 films currently part of the National Film Registry, which selects 25 historically or artistically notable films each year for preservation, in order to further memorialize, in print, these ephemeral records, many printed on fragile celluloid. Studio researcher and story analyst Eagan (MGM) organizes each brilliantly written entry chronologically, starting with an 1893 30-second film of blacksmiths and ending with 1996's Fargo. Each entry opens with details on cast, director, set, production, and current availability. A multipage essay of each film's backstory follows. A genuinely exciting and absorbing read, it relates vital details about early filmmaking and film culture."
-Library Journal, STARRED Review
" A fascinating insight into America's cinematic history." - The Stage, 13th May 2010
"In this entertaining and thorough 848-page tome, Eagan—a former researcher and story analyst for Warner Bros., MGM, and other Hollywood studios, as well as a journalist whose work has appeared in the Hollywood Reporter and the Nation—writes at length about each of those works in meaty, extensively researched entries, gracefully highlighting the registry's cultural and historical significance as well as charting its formation and reception.
Eagan's multifaceted writing elevates his book to something more provocative than a mere reference guide. It's refreshing that he doesn't treat all the films as equally deserving of masterpiece status (the occasional David Thomson—esque toppling of a sacred cow gives the book some bite). America's Film Legacy is a handy, portable archive in its own right, rich in trivia."
—Criterion Collection
"Each year 25 American films that are deemed "culturally, historically, or esthetically significant" are selected by filmmakers/historians for inclusion in the National Film Registry. The list of films now totals 500. Each has an entry in this one-volume reference, which is arranged chronologically from 1893 (Blacksmith Scene) to 1996 (Fargo). The registry includes documentaries, propaganda films, cartoons, experimental shorts, and every type of feature film, from Hollywood blockbusters to independent films. Interestingly, with every advance in film technologies (e.g., in film formats and digital sound/effects), preserving films has become more difficult, since new formats threaten the existence of older ones. For preservation purposes, the Library of Congress holds an archival print of each film. Besides the usual classics, some of the more interesting entries include San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, April 18, 1906, Hindenburg Disaster Newsreel Footage, and Zapruder Film (of the Kennedy assassination). For each film, Eagan (independent scholar) has included all the pertinent information about how and when it was made. Each essay is written in an entertaining yet informative manner, indicating the film's significance in American film history. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-level undergraduates and above; general readers."
-CHOICE
“I’ve always thought of my films as a kind of private history, a record of things that interested me, music, people, events, sometimes politics. They allowed me to watch like a cat, and not have to be a reporter. What made it risky was not explaining anything. When I got rid of the script and the narration in the early films, and went out hunting for films with a camera they were seen as sort of dicey and unorthodox and unfortunately for us, unsaleable, at least to TV. That was what got us into theaters.
I really welcome the existence of the National Film Registry and Daniel Eagan’s wonderful book—America’s Film Legacy—about it. The NFR’s determination to collect these early experimental works and not let them disappear is really collecting and preserving the history of our times. I believe that films will eventually be our most important artifact. They may well become a new language.”
-D.A. Pennebaker
"This valuable and highly readable book will serve equally well as a primer for newcomers to film history and a refresher course for more experienced viewers on the vast spectrum of American cinema. Best of all, it will introduce novices and veterans alike to a number of offbeat and unjustly-forgotten titles on the National Film Registry.”
-Leonard Maltin
"America's Film Legacy is a brilliant, insightful and invaluable breakthrough book which makes American film history and the men and women —both the legendary and the all but unknown—who created it, come to life in fresh and vivid detail. This superb book offers a startling and wise appreciation of the essence of their film achievements."
-Terry Sanders, Filmmaker
"The opportunity to revisit and be inspired by the past is one of the purposes behind the National Film Registry. The 1915 film The Italian was preserved from a single paper copy, and had that been done at the time I made The Godfather, I would have enjoyed having access to it. I'm proud that The Godfather and The Godfather Part II join The Italian on the Registry, an attempt to preserve our cinematic heritage. America's Film Legacy doesn't just explore the films on the Registry, it ties together the past and the present, showing how the great movies of today can be built on the those of an earlier era."
Francis Ford Coppola
"The Library of Congress' National Film Registry is the most important list today in the recognition of American film as art, entertainment and cultural history. Daniel Eagan's America's Film Legacy is the first book on this subject and it is essential reading for anyone wanting to know the remarkable breadth of accomplishment throughout the 120 years of the history of the cinema. Every film fan and every library should have a copy of this book."
-Dennis Doros, Co-founder and VP, Milestone Film & Video
"America’s Film Legacy is a valuable guide to the films chosen to represent the range, style, and diversity of subject matter of American cinema."
-Frederick Wiseman, Documentary Filmmaker
The great, the historic, and the lousy (but, alas, influential) all find their place in this engrossing survey of titles selected by the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry. Eagan chronologically catalogues 500 Registry films, from 1893’s 30-second Blacksmithing Scene to 1995’s Fargo, jumbling Hollywood classics together with obscure art films, cartoon shorts, documentaries, industrial and student films, newsreel footage from the Hindenburg disaster and the Zapruder film. Each entry includes complete cast and credits lists and an engaging one- to two-page historical and interpretive essay. These are packed with biographical thumbnails of actors and directors and making-of narratives—from screenplay rewrites to on-set feuds and hysterics to final-cut showdowns—that buffs and scholars will delight in. Eagan dutifully assesses the artistic merits of each film (yes, even Animal House) in critiques that abound in pithy and sometimes contrarian opinions... The result is an erudite, perceptive, always entertaining cinematic encyclopedia.
-Publishers Weekly [STARRED REVIEW]
"The wide range of important films in the Registry makes it a terrific starting point for anyone wishing to study the history of American cinema (as well as an excellent refresher course for veteran film buffs), and journalist and researcher Daniel Eagan’s America’s Film Legacy provides a lively guide to the collection.
...[Eagan's capsule histories] are riveting and extremely addicting — it is very easy to open the book looking for information on one film and then get lost for hours browsing among the various titles. Yet the book is best read from beginning to end because Eagan’s expertise as a film scholar is so vast; he constantly refers back and forth across the Registry to show the ways various careers, genres and technologies evolve, and to read his book as a continuous narrative is to grasp the history of American cinema as a whole.
America’s Film Legacy is as vital and indispensable a compendium as Andrew Sarris’ The American Cinema or David Thomson’s A Biographical Dictionary of Film; in fact, in its breadth of scholarship is far superior to the others.
As the National Film Registry continues to grow with each passing year, one hopes Eagan will update his guide, broadening and deepening its overview of American film history. Already, America’s Film Legacy is one of the most complete and entertaining works of its kind and a recommended addition to the library of any cinema fan."
-American Cinamatographer
For each film he provides a critical essay, fundamental facts and figures, and relevant information about archival sources and availability, which is crucial for any student or film buff who wants to take the next step and see the film in question. …Eagan has done his homework well, and brings his own critical eye to each article. A generous 818 pages long, America’s Film Legacy is a worthy survey of our homegrown film culture, as expressed by the selections of the National Film Registry; it also makes for good reading.
-Leonard Maltin, www.leonardmaltin.com
"In this entertaining and thorough 848-page tome, Eagan—a former researcher and story analyst for Warner Bros., MGM, and other Hollywood studios, as well as a journalist whose work has appeared in the Hollywood Reporter and the Nation—writes at length about each of those works in meaty, extensively researched entries, gracefully highlighting the registry’s cultural and historical significance as well as charting its formation and reception.
Eagan’s multifaceted writing elevates his book to something more provocative than a mere reference guide. It’s refreshing that he doesn’t treat all the films as equally deserving of masterpiece status (the occasional David Thomson–esque toppling of a sacred cow gives the book some bite). America’s Film Legacy is a handy, portable archive in its own right, rich in trivia."
—Criterion Collection
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27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
But I Saw the Movie,
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This review is from: America's Film Legacy: The Authoritative Guide to the Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry (Paperback)
The National Film Registry is a fascinating endeavour. It collects, in the Library of Congress, what it deems the most important films in our history. NOT the best, necessarily (some of them are downright awful... Elia Kazan's "Wild River", anyone?); not necessarily the most famous (I'll wager there isn't a movie buff alive who won't find at least one or two films he/she's never heard of before). Even being a full-length film isn't required,(any number of 7 minute cartoons and, from earlier days, brief snippets like "The Kiss"). All that IS required is that the film, in some way or other, has contributed something unique to the history and/or art of film. What have each of the films in this book, the first 500 selections, contributed? THAT is what this marvelously readable compendium is all about! Indeed, I can't imagine ANY film fan worthy of the name who WOULDN'T want to read this.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Book,
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This review is from: America's Film Legacy: The Authoritative Guide to the Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry (Paperback)
A great read.I took this to Europe with me to read on the plane and at the Airport. Lots of short articles that works for me, since I get interupions when I am trying to read a novel.....Good information for every Film fan.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A wealth of information, horribly formatted.,
By Mark (Little Falls, NJ United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: America's Film Legacy: The Authoritative Guide to the Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry (Paperback)
There's a great deal of useful information on the individual films in this book, but trying to find it is frustrating indeed. The book provides no index of titles or meaningful table of contents. The 500 titles are listed chronologically within the years of their release, the reader is first required to determine the release date, then riffle thru the book to find the section that covers those years (NOT marked on the pages themselves), and then within that section locate the title alphabetically. When I first received the book, I tried to find the entry for "Eraserhead" , it took five minutes of tedious flipping through the pages to locate it. Surely providing an index would not have been too much trouble, it certainly would have been an enormous courtesy to the reader.
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