Audio Video News

Last week, the American Film Institute (AFI) commemorated the first 100 years of American movies by officially announcing their prestigious list of the 100 greatest films of this century, as determined by a "blue-ribbon" panel of more than 1500 members of the American film community. In a nationally televised broadcast, "AFI's 100 Years . . . 100 Movies," Orson Welles' classic Citizen Kane claimed the No.1 position.

The Top Ten list:
1. Citizen Kane
2. Casablanca
3. The Godfather
4. Gone With the Wind
5. Lawrence of Arabia
6. The Wizard of Oz
7. The Graduate
8. On the Waterfront
9. Schindler's List
10. Singin' in the Rain

Other winners include: Amadeus, An American in Paris, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Bonnie and Clyde, Bringing Up Baby, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, City Lights, A Clockwork Orange, Doctor Zhivago, Giant, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, Goodfellas, The Jazz Singer (1927), King Kong (1933), The Maltese Falcon, Mutiny on the Bounty (1933), Network, North by Northwest, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Philadelphia Story, Rebel Without a Cause, The Searchers, The Sound of Music, Stagecoach (1939), A Streetcar Named Desire, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Unforgiven, The Wild Bunch, West Side Story, Wuthering Heights (1939), and Yankee Doodle Dandy.

Also on the AFI Web site is a slightly different list of the Top Ten movies of all time, this time from the public:
1. Casablanca
2. Gone With the Wind
3. The Godfather
4. Citizen Kane
5. Star Wars
6. The Wizard of Oz
7. It's a Wonderful Life
8. Schindler's List
9. Ben-Hur
10. Forrest Gump

More than 1500 voters from across the film community, including artists, critics, exhibitors, executives, and historians---as well as President Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Vice President Al Gore and his wife, Tipper---were invited to select the top 100 films. Voters were asked to select the 100 best films from a list of 400 films produced between 1896 and 1996, the first 100 years of American filmmaking.

Other presentations celebrating AFI's Top 100 include 10 hour-long specials appearing on TNT, produced by Mel Stuart and film historian Richard Schickel. Each program offers a peek into what made these films the greatest movies of all time, including interviews with filmmakers and extensive clips from the films themselves. In addition, a week-long festival showcasing many of the films is scheduled to run this fall on the Turner Classic Movies channel.