They're among this year's batch of 25 cinematic works selected by the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress to be preserved in perpetuity.
The National Film Registry's latest list includes classic flicks from the dawn of cinema up through the 1990s. Among the films selected for eternal life: Bob Rafaelson's Five Easy Pieces (1970), Gordon Parks' original Shaft (1971), and Martin Scorsese's 1990 gangster drama GoodFellas, starring Robert De Niro and Ray Liotta--the most recent inductee.
Perhaps timed to the fascinating election and the media's blown coverage of it, the National Registry also gave the greenlight to Sidney Lumet's Network (1976), and a 1901 film of President McKinley's inauguration produced by the Edison Company.
Other films making the cut include a 1924 version of Peter Pan directed by Herbert Brenon; Mervyn LeRoy's Little Caesar (1930) with Edward G. Robinson; Todd Browning's Dracula (1931), starring Bela Lugosi; Love Finds Andy Hardy (1938) featuring a young Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland and Lana Turner; and George Cukor's A Star Is Born (1954), also starring Garland with James Mason.
"Our film heritage is America's living past," said Librarian of Congress James Billington in a statement accompanying the list. "It celebrates the creativity and inventiveness of diverse communities and our nation as a whole."
Since its inception in 1989, the National Film Registry's goal is to build a catalogue of American movies it deems "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant" in order to save them from extinction as part of our national heritage. Many of the films are in danger of being lost forever due to nitrate deterioration, color-fading, and other chemical break-down processes which threaten the film stock.
"America's film heritage--by any measure--is an endangered species," said Billington. "Fifty percent of the films produced before 1950 and at least 90 percent made before 1920 have disappeared forever."
The Registry also added James Sibley Watson's The Fall of the House of Usher (1928), William Dieterle's The Life of Emile Zola (1937), Raoul Walsh's Regneration (1915), Charles' Bryant's Salome (1922), The Tall T (1958), a western from Columbia, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? directed by Frank Tashlin and Walt Disney's first real-life adventure, 1953's The Living Desert, directed by James Algar. The oldest movie to be added was the silent, 14-minute The Land Beyond the Sunset by Edison.
"This list is designed to reflect the full breadth and diversity of America's film heritage, thus increasing public awareness of the richness of American cinema and the need for its preservation," added Billington.
Shaft's entry is just such an example, demonstrating the National Film Registry's commitment to selecting films of major cultural significance.
"When [Shaft came out, it was a very important film-particularly for the African-American population," David Francis, chief of the library's motion picture, broadcasting and recorded sound division, told the Hollywood Reporter. "Shaft was a hero--in a way, the first Hollywood hero that was African American."
While not exactly box office hits, some important documentaries also found a home in the registry, including Sherman's March (1986) and Godfrey Reggio's Koyaanisqatsi (1983) with a music score by Phillip Glass.
On the lighter side, the Warner Bros. cartoon Porky in Wackyland and Filmack Studios' classic 1957 theater intermission trailer, Let's All Go To the Lobby (with the famous hot dog and bun advising people to "get a bite to eat"), were also picked.
This year's inductees, chosen from more than a thousand titles nominated by the public, the National Film Preservation Board, the Library of Congress' Motion Picture Division Staff and a separate advisory counsel, brings to 300 the total number of films in the registry.