You could say it's about time.
Robert Zemeckis' 1985 time-travel opus Back to the Future was selected along with Steven Spielberg's 1977 UFO tale Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Kevin Costner's 1990 revisionist western Dances with Wolves among the 25 movie classics to be preserved for posterity by the the Library of Congress' National Film Registry.
Joining them in the class of 2007 will be director William Wyler's adaptation of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights (1939); the big-screen version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! (1955); Sydney Lumet's acclaimed courtroom drama 12 Angry Men (1957), John Ford's last great western, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962); Bullitt (1968), the Steve McQueen crime thriller sporting the car chase to end all car chases; and Days of Heaven (1978), Terence Malick's haunting love story hailed as one of the most beautiful films ever put to celluloid.
Considered the film that solidified Zemeckis' reputation as a blockbuster director, Back to the Future stars Michael J. Fox as teen rocker Marty McFly and Christopher Lloyd as his mad scientist-mentor Doc Brown who not only builds a time machine out of a DeLorean, but sends Marty back to the year 1955 where he accidentally interferes with his parents' first meeting. The sci-fi comedy showed off Zemeckis' technical prowess, which he further exhibited to great effect in Who Framed Roger Rabbit and more recently The Polar Express and Beowulf.
Before serving as an executive producer on Back to the Future, Spielberg made his own mark in the bizarre with Close Encounters, which followed an everyman (Richard Dreyfuss) who's compelled by an alien force to travel to Wyoming's Devil's Tower for a one-on-one with little ETs. The film marked the showman's second official box office mega-hit after Jaws and is praised for its pioneering visual effects.
Costner's passion project, Dances With Wolves was a tour de force that became the second western ever to win Best Picture. It followed a Civil War soldier who joins the Sioux tribe and accurately portrayed the destruction of Native American culture and history.
The latest batch of 25 was selected from more than 1,000 candidates nominated by the movie-going public. The list brings to 475 the total number of motion pictures deemed "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant that have been chosen for historical preservation by the library with input from the National Film Preservation Board since Congress first passed legislation creating the program back in 1992.
"Even as Americans fill the movie theaters to see the latest releases, few are aware that up to half the films produced in this country before 1950—and as much as 90 percent of those made before 1920—are lost forever," said Librarian of Congress James Billington. "The National Film Registry seeks not only to honor these films, but to ensure that they are preserved for future generations to enjoy."
Other iconic flicks earning immortality include George Cukor's The Women (1939), a proto-feminist tale that brought together some of Tinseltown's biggest actresses at the time including Norma Shearer, Paulette Goddard; Joan Fontaine, Joan Crawford, Mary Boland and Rosalind Russell; Dorothy Arzner's Dance, Girl, Dance (1940) one of the first films directed by a woman starring Lucille Ball and Maureen O'Hara; the Betty Davis-Claude Rains romance vehicle Now, Voyager (1942); Mervyn Leroy's short film, The House I Live In (1945), featuring a poignant message from Frank Sinatra promoting religious diversity and crooning the title tune; and Jules Dassin's The Naked City (1948), a film noir which was one of the first to make use of actual New York locations instead of a backlot; In a Lonely Place (1950), an early Hollywood satire with Humphrey Bogart from helmer Nicholas Ray.
Then there's avante garde filmmaker Marie Menken's Glimpse of the Garden (1957), offering up a lyrical tour of a flower garden set to bird calls; Tom, Tom the Piper's Son (1969-71), Ken Jacob's experimental masterpiece which reverently resurrects an early cinema short of the fairy tale song to study the manipulation of print images, motion and light; and Peege (1972), a stirring student film about a dying grandmother from Grease director Randall Kleiser made while he attended the University of Southern California.
Among some of the older gems to make the cut include Henry King's 1921 silent fable, Tol'able David; The Strong Man, the 1926 feature comedy headlining Harry Langdon, one of the silent era's greatest funnymen; Mighty Like a Moose, Leo McCarey's early comedy short starring Charley Chase and a bevy of sight gags; The Sex Life of the Polyp, the 1928 short by humorist Robert Benchley; 1932's Grand Hotel, considered the first, "ensemble" picture by pairing together such MGM stars as Greta Garbo, Wallace Beery, John and Lionel Barrymore and Joan Crawford in a film with multiple storylines; and Three Little Pigs, Walt Disney's 1933 animated short that's been voted the 11th best cartoon of all time in a 1990s poll of animators.
Amateur filmmakers are also well represented courtesy of photographer-painter Wallace Kelly, whose 12-minute 1938 film, Our Day, was singled out for capturing in a comic fashion small town, Southern life during the Great Depression.