Terminator, Deliverance added to U.S. film registry
Last Updated: Tuesday, December 30, 2008 | 12:02 PM ET
CBC News
Arnold Schwarzenegger's deadpan one-liner "I'll be back" will be enshrined for posterity by the U.S. government, as The Terminator joins a host of new additions to the U.S. National Film Registry.
The Library of Congress on Tuesday announced 25 titles joining the growing collection, established in 1989 to digitize and preserve a diverse portrait of American video and audio files.
Tuesday's 25 titles bring the total number of films in the collection to 500.
"The registry helps this nation understand the diversity of America's film heritage and, just as importantly, the need for its preservation,"said James Billington, officially known as the Librarian of Congress.
"The nation has lost about half of the films produced before 1950 and as much as 90 per cent of those made before 1920."
Terminator, Deliverance, In Cold Blood on list
Along with Canadian-born director James Cameron's The Terminator — which became a cult hit and turned the Austrian-born Schwarzenegger (now California governor) into a Hollywood action star — the Library of Congress is adding the acclaimed 1972 drama Deliverance and Richard Brook's 1967 version of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood.
Musicals making the cut include the groundbreaking all-black 1929 movie musical Hallelujah! and 1961's Flower Drum Song, the film adaptation of C.Y. Lee's bestselling novel about Asian-American generational conflict and romance (which also spawned the successful Rodgers and Hammerstein Broadway musical).
However, not all the films chosen for the registry are professional productions: Disneyland Dream, for instance, is one family's home-video chronicle of its 1956 visit to the newly opened California theme park.
The remaining films added this year are:
- White Fawn's Devotion(1910).
- The Perils of Pauline(1914).
- One Week(1920).
- Foolish Wives(1922).
- So's Your Old Man(1926).
- The Invisible Man(1933).
- Sergeant York(1941).
- George Stevens WW2 Footage (1943-46).
- The Killers(1946).
- The Asphalt Jungle(1950).
- Johnny Guitar(1954).
- A Face in the Crowd(1957).
- On the Bowery(1957).
- The 7th Voyage of Sinbad(1958).
- The March(1964).
- The Pawnbroker(1965).
- No Lies(1973).
- Free Radicals(1979).
- Water and Power(1989).
Each year, curators accept online public nominations for the film registry before they make their final selections — films based on each entry's cultural, historical or esthetic significance.
However, organizers often point out that their registry additions are not necessarily the same as picks made by movie critics.
With files from the Associated Press
