100 Years, 100 Films...But Hoping It Doesn’t Take Me Another 100 Years to Watch Them All

I love watching the American Film Institute’s annual “100 Years, 100 Films” specials. Ever since I first saw Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman in Alfred Hitchock’s Spellbound when I was about ten, I’ve had a passion for classic films. Snuggling up on the couch with a bag of popcorn and a good old black-and-white movie on TV is my idea of a perfect evening, and I’ve spent many happy hours with Bogie and Bacall, Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, James Stewart, Clark Gable, Audrey Hepburn, and so many more of the greats. Even with all the hours I’d logged with the classics, though, I still didn’t feel truly cinema literate. How can I call myself a cinema buff if I haven’t seen the whole of Lawrence of Arabia? If I only remember snatches of John Ford’s great Westerns from watching the last half-hour of each on TV with my grandfather every day after school? If I fast-forwarded through the light show in the Star Gate sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey? If I haven’t given myself the chance to get to know Buster Keaton, Bette Davis, and Sir Laurence Olivier as well as I know Jack Nicholson, Meryl Streep, and Sir Alec Guinness?

I decided I needed a plan, some means of determining which films are vital to my cinema education and to track my progress. That’s when I got the idea of challenging myself to watch all 100 of the movies on the AFI’s Top Films of All Time list (the 1998 version; they put out a revised list in 2008, but I’m sticking with the original for now). The AFI list is great because the films are selected based not only on their greatness as works of art but also on their lasting influence on American cinema and American culture as a whole. Most of these films have become a part of the American consciousness; for example, even if you (like me) have never seen The Godfather or On the Waterfront, you still probably know “Leave the gun, take the cannoli” and “I coulda been a contender.” I’ve seen portions of almost every film on the list, but I stipulated to myself as a part of the plan that I can’t check off a movie unless I’ve seen it from start to finish, in order (pausing is permissible, but not fast-forwarding or missing ten minutes to feed the cat or the like). I also have to have seen it recently enough that I can recall a significant amount of the plot–hence why E.T. is on my “yet to see” list, though I loved it as a kid. I’ve made decent headway–I’ve seen 40 to 45 of the 100 films so far–but I’ve still got a long way to go. I’ll definitely post my reactions to the films I watch as I check them off the list, and I hope to write about some of my favorites that I’ve already seen once (or twice..or a dozen times before–the list of “yet-to-see” movies is shrinking so slowly is because I re-visit my old favorites so often).