Film ‘Treasures’ Now Playing in D.C. : Library of Congress Selects 25 Movies for Preservation

Fifty years after first setting foot in town, Mr. Smith has come to Washington again.

The 1939 film classic “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” was among 25 movies cited Tuesday as American movie treasures by the Library of Congress. The move was designed to bring attention to the fragility of the medium and spur wider efforts to protect its finest exemplars.

The proposal to designate certain films as “national treasures” grew out of the controversy over colorizing black-and-white films. In a compromise move, Congress last year adopted a law, the National Film Preservation Act, directing the librarian to select 25 films each year over the next three years.

But the law does not prevent producers from colorizing a film or cutting it up for TV airing--another practice that angers many of Hollywood’s directors and writers. The 1988 law simply mandates that those films chosen for the list carry a label if they are significantly altered. Some of the country’s biggest colorizers already label their films.

The list, to be augmented over the next two years by an additional 50 films, represents a diverse tableau of American cinema, ranging from the animated wizardry of Walt Disney’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” to the brooding noir of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo.”

Other movies, several silent films among them, include “Casablanca,” “Citizen Kane,” “Gone With the Wind,” “High Noon,” “Singin’ in the Rain,” “The Wizard of Oz,” “Some Like It Hot” and “Star Wars.”

“Make no mistake, this list of 25 films is not a list of the best 25 American films,” Librarian of Congress James Billington said. “. . . This is not Academy Awards night.”

But with half of all the films made before 1950 already lost, Billington said that it’s necessary to remind the American public of the art form’s value--and ephemeral nature.

Calling the list “a tribute to the American creative spirit,” Billington said, “their selection should draw attention to the hundreds of other films which deserve similar consideration.

“The Library of Congress is the closest thing we have to a universal depository for the American memory,” he said, noting that archivists’ preference to “preserve all films and let the test of time decide which are significant” is prohibitively expensive.

The selection, which started with more than 3,200 public nominations, was narrowed down by 13 members of the National Film Preservation Board, an organization formed by Congress in the same legislation last year. After a July meeting at UCLA, each board member submitted a secret ballot of 25 nominees, but Billington chose the final list.

There were some departures from a preliminary “working list” of 57 films that the board put together earlier this year. Topping that early list was the 1939 production of “The Grapes of Wrath,” based upon the John Steinbeck novel. “Grapes of Wrath” made the final list of 25, but “It’s a Wonderful Life,” which tied for second in the preliminary round, was left off.

Robert Rosen, director of the UCLA Film Archive and a member of the film preservation board, said Billington’s list fairly reflected the spirit of the board’s discussions. “There was a consensus on the need to have a broadly representative selection,” Rosen said.

Rosen noted that the final list covered the silent and sound periods; a variety of genres, including Westerns, musicals and animated films; milestones in popular entertainment like “Gone With the Wind,” and films with important social themes, such as “The Best Years of Our Lives.”

“My only fear,” Rosen said, “is that people will want to read this list as constituting the best--the equivalent of an Academy Award for historic films. The whole spirit of the board was to avoid that.”

Under the law establishing the National Film Preservation Board, the members are charged with choosing “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant” films for the national registry.

Billington, best known for his mammoth history of Russian culture, “The Axe and the Icon,” agreed that the task was difficult and that the list “just scraped the surface.” He added that he hoped that Congress would continue the act beyond its three-year period so that 25 films could be declared worthy of official recognition annually.

Roger L. Mayer, president of Turner Entertainment Co., which regularly colorizes black-and-white films, said the final list represents “some of the finest American movies ever created. The formation of the film registry should help to focus the public’s attention on the importance of recognizing, preserving, and most importantly, viewing classic films.”

The National Film Preservation Board was the compromise outcome of a heated congressional battle over colorizing black-and-white movies, as well as editing films for TV airing. The legislative fight pitted allies of the movie studios and TV producers against Hollywood’s creative community, particularly the Directors Guild of America. But the directors, who originally pressed for legislation creating the preservation board, distanced themselves from the organization’s first major action.

“It’s certainly a distinguished list, but it’s irrelevant what the choices are,” said director Elliot Silverstein, speaking on behalf of the guild. “We would have preferred a bill which would have protected all films from defacement without notice to the public.”

Silverstein blamed the cap of 25 films per year, contained in the final law, on legislative pressure brought by the Motion Picture Assn. of America, which represents film studios.

The DGA is lobbying Congress to adopt a law requiring the labeling of all films that have been colorized or substantially edited for TV airing. The directors also support “moral rights” legislation that would give directors the right to sue producers for any changes in their films that they consider damaging to their reputations.

Although the Library of Congress houses the largest film collection in the world, including half of the U.S. archival stock, it has only two of the 25 films on lasting prints, “Mr. Smith” and “Casablanca,” Billington said.

Stewart, in Washington on a book-signing stop for his collection of poems, took the news of his film’s inclusion on the list with equanimity.

“I think it’s wonderful,” said the frail octogenarian, a faint smile trembling across his pallid face.

But the erstwhile Mr. Smith, a paragon of heartland integrity who takes on the nation’s capital and wins, said he had little idea that the film would ever be so well received.

“In the end, I didn’t have anything to do with it,” he said. “It was the audience.”