Despite solid critical acclaim, Iron Man (2008) was snubbed for major category nominations at the 2009 Academy Awards. Nominated in two technical categories, it went home empty-handed. But as of Dec. 14, 2022, the movie that launched Phase One in the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been inducted into the National Film Registry as a designated “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant” American film.
Every December since 1989, the Library of Congress has issued its list of 25 films that are enshrined into the National Film Registry. The registry comprises the breadth and depth of America’s rich film heritage, from home movies and newsreels to cartoons, documentaries and independent and Hollywood studio films, from the Zapruder film to Star Wars. Films must be at least 10 years old to be considered.
For those of you who don’t want to do the math, the registry, with this year’s inductees, now numbers 850 films.
How are the film’s chosen? Registry advisers comprising 44 representatives from the film community advise Dr. Carla Hayden, the Librarian of Congress. This year, the board voted in three rounds, narrowing down the list of prospective inductees from 389 to 84. Dr. Hayden made final selection of 25 films. The public can nominate films at loc.gov/film.
The mandate to enshrine films as culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant is “nice and vague,” Dave Kehr, Museum of Modern Art film curator, former film critic and registry adviser, told Vanity Fair in 2019. “You can find justification for pretty much anything you want, which I think is good. Different people advocate passionately for different things, and we make our pitches to the librarian, who ultimately makes up her own mind. Every year, somehow, this list appears.”
The National Film Registry’s inaugural Class of 1989 was mostly no-brainers, including D. W. Griffith’s silent epic Intolerance (1916), Robert Flaherty’s seminal documentary Nanook of the North (1922), two silent comedy masterpieces, Buster Keaton’s The General (1927) and Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936), Disney’s first animated feature Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Victor Fleming’s Gone With the Wind (1939) and The Wizard of Oz (1939), Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane (1941), Billy Wilder’s Sunset Blvd. (1950) and Some Like It Hot (1959) and Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned How to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964).
This year’s list spans Mardi Gras Carnival (1898), the earliest film known to exist of New Orleans’ carnival parade, and Dee Rees’ award-winning independent film, Pariah (2011) about a black teenager who struggles to come out as a lesbian to family and friends.
The National Film Registry’s Class of 2022 is notable for its diversity of expression and storytelling. Women, filmmakers of color and LGBTQ+ individuals directed or co-directed 16 of this year’s inductees.
This list includes two Latino cinematic milestones, Michael Gordon’s Cyrano de Bergerac (1950), starring Jose Ferrer, who became the first Hispanic and Puerto Rican to earn an Academy Award for Best Actor, and Robert Young’s landmark independent film, The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez (1982) starring Edward James Olmos as a Mexican-American farmer in a desperate flight from the Texas Rangers.
Victor Masayesva Jr.’s documentary, Itam Hakim, Hopiit (1984) comprises a quartet of stories told to Hopi children by elder Hopi historian Ross Macaya. Word Is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives (1977), directed by the collective Mariposa Film Group, was a pivotal documentary in 1970s’ emerging gay rights movement with its panoramic interviews with more than two dozen gay men and women representing a wide range of ages, races and backgrounds.
Also included amongst this year’s 25 inductees are several key films representing core film genres, including Rob Reiner’s quintessential romantic comedy, When Harry Met Sally… (1989), Frederick Wiseman’s devastating documentary, Titicut Follies (1967), John Musker and Ron Clements’ The Little Mermaid (1989), credited with ushering in a new Golden Age of Disney animated features, Gordon Parks, Jr.’s Super Fly (1972) with its killer Curtis Mayfield soundtrack, and Kenneth Anger’s influential avant-garde short, Scorpio Rising (1963).
A trio of popular entertainments have also been anointed with National Film Registry status: Brian De Palma’s Carrie (1976), featuring Sissy Spacek’s and Piper Laurie’s Oscar-nominated performances, Stanley Donen’s stylish romantic mystery, Charade (1963) starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, and John Waters’ PG-rated Hairspray (1988). If you’re thinking this was a “safe” choice among Waters’ more outré filmography, do know that his cult classic Pink Flamingos (1972) was inducted into the Registry last year.
The remaining films include: Cinda Firestone’s documentary Attica (1974); Nikolai Ursin’s UCLA student short Behind Every Good Man (1967); Liane Brandon’s short Betty Tells Her Story (1972); Haile Gerima’s thesis project Bush Mama (1967); Cab Calloway Home Movie (1948-1951); Reginald Hudlin’s House Party (1990); Robert Nakamura’s Manzanar (1971); Thomas Reichman’s documentary Mingus (1968); and the documentary Union Maids (1976), directed by Julia Reichert, who passed away on Dec. 1.
The National Film Registry, Dr. Hayden said in a statement, “serves as a time machine carousel to showcase the incredible breadth of American creativity, experience, and who we are and have been as a nation.”
Not all of that plays well today. Take D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915), which advanced film’s status as an art form, but also depicts the Ku Klux Klan as heroes. It was inducted into the registry in 1992. Dr. Hayden has said that the film would not be cancelled as a reflection of America’s history and culture, the good, the bad and the ugly
The National Film Registry was born out of the National Film Preservation Act, which passed in 1988, mostly in response to the then-nascent menace of colorizing black and white films. It was created in part to raise awareness of the need for film preservation, lest America lose one of its most important cultural legacies.
As a board member, actress Alfre Woodard compared the registry in importance to the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., “as a testament to who we are,” she told Vanity Fair. “You really know a people by their art and the stories they tell. Whether it is established filmmakers, young filmmakers, orphaned films we’re finding, student films; they tell us who we are. It is our history of using film to express ourselves.”
