Customer Reviews

America's Film Legacy: The Authoritative Guide to the Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I've been trying to watch all the films on the National Film Registry for a couple years now. It's become a project for me, and I've created a spreadsheet to track all the films. I've also recruited friends into the project, and seem to have drum up some interest in films because of this process. The NFR doesn't cover the best films nor the most popular, but it covers the most notable. Watching these movies will create a deep impression on you and change your life. It will also significantly enhance your appreciation of film.

Daniel Egan has done a wonderful job cataloging the first 500 films of the NFR. This book has been accompanying me and my project for a year now, and it is the perfect companion, for some very specific reasons:

(1) There are no spoilers. Using this book for background info on the films is so much better than looking them up on Wikipedia because major plot details are not given away.

(2) Full treatments are given to even obscure titles. I'd say that for 30% of the films mentioned in this book, Daniel has provided more information than you can possibly expect to find on the Internet. For the other 70%, he has provided insight and details that you'd be hard to find elsewhere.

(3) The layout of the book is easy to navigate. Just look up the book by name or by year in the beginning, and then the rest of the book is sorted by year. This is much better than having the book laid out alphabetically.

If you love movies, you'll love this book.