The American Film Institute (AFI) has revamped its decade old list of the greatest American films. Called 100 Years...100 Films, the original list was used as a selling tool by DVD marketers to bring public awareness to films that might otherwise have been overlooked. The marketing strategy has come full circle. Just as the original list helped spark interest in DVD rental and sales, the new list reflects the influence of DVDs on the film scholars, critics and Hollywood insiders who voted in the new AFI poll.

Interestingly, the top five films on the list (Citizen Kane, The Godfather, Casablanca, Raging Bull and Singin' in the Rain) all had deluxe edition DVD packages issued within the past few years, while the film that dropped the most, The African Queen, has yet to find DVD distribution within the U.S..

The original subpar DVD release of All Quiet on the Western Front is likely to blame for that great film's dropping off of the list altogether. Although Universal reissued it in a superior transfer early this year, it was probably too little too late for those who had already dismissed it as being too musty. They need to take another look. The film's anti-war message has never been so needed.

The futuristic Blade Runner, which was also recently given a spiffed up release, fared much better. It made the list pending the promise of an even more spectacular DVD Special Edition after the 25-year-old film is reissued theatrically later this year.

The Buster Keaton film, The General, which at number 18 is the highest debuting film on the list, was little seen and long forgotten by the general public before its DVD release within the past decade. Available along with Keaton's other masterwork, Steamboat Bill, Jr. , as part of Image's Buster Keaton Double Feature, The General is both a full-fledged comedy and authentic period epic. Taking place during the Civil War, the title refers to a locomotive, not a military commander.

Keaton's rival for greatest silent film comedian, Charlie Chaplin, continues to be represented by three films on the list: City Lights, Modern Times and The Gold Rush. City Lights, which has long been my favorite Chaplin film, leaped 65 places from number 76 to number 11. While others prefer the little tramp's last appearance in 1936's Modern Times,I always preferred him in this 1931 gem that is as much a tragedy as it is a comedy.

Silent cinema reached its apex with F.W. Murnau's Sunrise in 1927 and the AFI has finally recognized it, replacing the maudlin first talkie, The Jazz Singer, with this beautifully filmed love story.

Long recognized for its cinematic innovations, D.W. Griffith's 1915 epic The Birth of a Nation is also racist propaganda and it too has been replaced on the list with Griffith's more tolerable Intolerance, filmed a year later with more sumptuous sets.

Race relations in general have gotten a much needed overhaul on the new list with the explosive Do the Right Thing replacing the phony foibles of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner while the unfairly neglected In the Heat of the Night should find new fans now that it has made the list.

The AFI still loves musicals, though not the same musicals. While Singin' in the Rain, The Wizard of Oz, West Side Story, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and The Sound of Music remain on the list, My Fair Lady, An American in Paris and Fantasia have been replaced with Cabaret, Nashville, A Night at the Opera and Swing Time.

While I have a soft spot in my heart for My Fair Lady, I always thought An American in Paris over-rated and I could never warm to Fantasia. On the other hand, their replacement films grow richer with time.

While not my favorite Hitchcock, I personally prefer The 39 Steps, Notorious and Rear Window, my hat is off to the AFI voters for placing Vertigo in the top ten. This has been my favorite film of its year, 1958, ever since I saw it at the impressionable age of 14. That it is finally receiving this kind of recognition, placing just ahead of the long revered The Wizard of Oz, leaves me overjoyed just thinking about the legions that will now discover it for themselves.

I am even more excited about the leap of John Ford's The Searchers from number 96 on the old list to number 12 on the new one. Obviously influenced by the exquisitely packaged DVD released a year ago, the voters have taken to their hearts my favorite film of 1956. Released at a time when practically ever other show on television was a western, the film was pretty much taken for granted in its initial release. Despite the public's seeming indifference, this has long been an influence on film-makers. George Lucas all but lifted a key scene for Star Wars and Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver is nothing if not a colder, urbanized version of the main thrust of the film.

While one of Ford's masterpieces has gotten its due, others have not been so lucky. 1939's Stagecoach is off the list, 1940's The Grapes of Wrath has dropped two notches though it is still the highest ranked film of its year, and 1941's How Green Was My Valley is still among the missing.

I am among the few who think that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences did the right thing by giving the 1941 best picture Oscar to How Green Was My Valley over Citizen Kane but legions of cineastes are so incensed over the hallowed Citizen Kane‘s loss to this day that How Green Was My Valley never gets a fair shake on lists of this type.

Faring much better is Sullivan's Travels, Preston Sturges' 1942 comedy that has become a perennial of Turner Classics Movies (TCM), the pre-eminent TV showcase for old films. Released on DVD as part of Universal's The Preston Sturges Collection along with The Lady Eve, The Palm Beach Story and Hail the Conquering Hero, this paean to laughter as a cure for society's ills is one of those films that just keeps getting better with every viewing. It has finally made the AFI's list.

Replacing George Stevens' 1956 Giant as an example of the changing Texas of the 1950s, Peter Bogdanovich's 1971 masterpiece, The Last Picture Show with its cavalcade of great performances, also makes the list as do one socially relevant drama for each decade from the 1950s through the 1980s: 12 Angry Men, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, All the President's Men and Sophie's Choice.

Despite much fanfare about opening up the list to newer films,only four films producedsince the previous cut-off, Saving Private Ryan, Titanic, The Sixth Sense and The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, make the list.

Stephen Spielberg's 1998 Oscar winner, Saving Private Ryan, replaces Franklin J. Schaffner's 1970 Oscar winner, Patton,as the only World War II epic on the list. Interestingly, the first film in the The Lord of the Rings trilogy is the one voted in, while it was the last one, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King that won the Oscar.

Titanic, the box office juggernaut and record Oscar winner that it was, was an expected addition and so was The Sixth Sense, which has had at least two elaborate DVD presentations since it took the box-office by storm in 1999.

Others new to the list are Spartacus, which was given an elaborate Criterion DVD treatment early on and The Shawshank Redemption,which developed a cult following on DVD.

Going from the sublime to the ridiculous, Warner Bros., eschewing their usual good taste, have unleashed twelve new-to-DVD cult "classics". Beware, these are no classics, but most are worth seeing at least once.

The first and still the best of the women's prison films, 1950's Caged!, directed by John Cromwell (Since You Went Away, Anna and the King of Siam) has long since been eclipsed by much more harrowing prison fare, much of it on TV. Even the family friendly Murder, She Wrote did an episode set in a women's prison that was edgier twenty years ago. Still, the performances remain watchable, not just Oscar-nominated Eleanor Parker (Detective Story, Home from the Hill) and Hope Emerson (Adam's Rib, TV's Peter Gunn), but Agnes Moorehead, Betty Garde, Lee Patrick and Jan Sterling as well.

A critical and commercial flop in its day, 1955's The Land of the Pharaohs almost ended the career of Howard Hawks (Bringing Up Baby, Red River) but seen today the film holds up a lot better than such other biblical and historical epics of the mid-fifties as The Silver Chalice, The Egyptian and Diane. Joan Collins has her best pre-Dynasty role as the treacherous wife of Pharaoh Jack Hawkins.

1955's The Prodigal, directed by Richard Thorpe (Ivanhoe, Jailhouse Rock), though, isn't any better today than it was then. Lana Turner (Peyton Place, Imitation of Life) seems to be sleepwalking throughout.

Turner is also represented in the collection by 1969's The Big Cube, a film that should have ended her career, but oddly didn't. Only 48 at the time, Turner nevertheless required soft focus lenses for her close-ups as an actress being driven mad by LSD cubes slipped to her by her stepdaughter and would-be stepson-in-law. As the stepdaughter, Karin Mossberg, a long forgotten ingénue with a voice like Zsa Zsa Gabor (though she is supposed to be the daughter of Irishman Dan O'Herlihy) makes Turner look like God's gift to acting by comparison. As the would-be stepson-in-law, George Chakiris is so bad he should have been required to return the Oscar he won for West Side Story.

Joan Crawford's last film, 1970's Trog, is not as bad as its reputation. Sure, the story is sappy and the monster not very convincing, but Crawford delivers her lines as if she were appearing in a prestige film. Rumor has it that she required a pint of vodka to get through each scene but you can't tell it from her performance. She looks sober as a judge throughout. She also seems to be having a lot more fun than she had in her previous effort, the truly awful Berserk!.

Ever wonder what became of the characters Dana Andrews and Jeanne Crain played in 1945's State Fair? Imagine them as the terrorized couple they play in 1967's Hot Rods to Hell, foolish enough to buy a motel sight unseen in the California desert six years after
Psycho. Nobody personified moral indignation better than Andrews (Laura, The Best Years of Our Lives) and when he's had enough, watch out! His curtain speech is one of his best.

Attack of the 50 ft. Woman, The Giant Behemoth, Queen of Outer Space and Colossus of Rhodesare as silly as their titles indicate, and Skyjacked is too earnest for its own good, but Zero Hour! is a hoot.

Dumped on the second half of a double-bill with Bombers B-52 in the winter doldrums between Thanksgiving and Christmas of 1957, the earnest Zero Hour! would have been long forgotten were it not for Airplane! which spoofs it mercilessly. Seen after Airplane! it's impossible to watch it without fits of laughter. Dana Andrews, Linda Darnell and Sterling Hayden star.

-Peter J. Patrick (June 26, 2007)

The Criterion Collection scores again with two eagerly-awaited releases: Lindsay Anderson's If... (1968 UK, 1969 US) and Claude Berri's The Two of Us (1967 France, 1968 US).

Thematically, If..., about a repressive boys' school, resembles Jean Vigo's Zero for Conduct (1933). Artistically, it's very much a film of its time. 1969, the year it was released in the U.S., was a watershed year for film. Two years earlier, Mike Nichols' The Graduate and Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde set new boundaries in big screen depictions of sex and violence. By 1969, frank explorations of those themes were everywhere. Films took us places we'd never been before – on the road with pot smoking hippies in Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider, into the nether world of male hustlers in John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy, on the beach with teenage rapists in Frank Perry's Last Summer and in the midst of political turmoil in Haskell Wexler's Medium Cool.

Old themes were given new slants as witness the seedy rise of Nazi Germany in Luchino Visconti's The Damned, the use of popular music as a condemnation of war in Richard Attenborough's Oh! What a Lovely War, a look into the oppressive desperation fueling marathon dance contests of the 1930s in Sydney Pollack's They Shoot Horses, Don't They? , and the cynical exposure of a beloved schoolteacher in Ronald Neame's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

Into this mix came the allegorical If..., giving credence to a generation with its anti-establishment fire, both literal and figurative. 

Two things that pass as artistic license in the film were actually done because the production was short of money.  One is the switch from color to black-and-white and back again several times, the other is the smoke rising, then receding, then rising again in the final scene.  It is actually the same shot played forward, then in reverse, then forward again.

Malcolm McDowell, whose portrayal of protagonist Mick Travis caused a sensation at the time, became a huge star thanks to this film.  He reprised the role in Anderson's Britannia Hospital fourteen years later, but there are traces of the character evident in McDowell's performances in Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange and Anderson's O Lucky Man! as well.

The DVD also includes Anderson's moving Oscar-winning documentary, 1954's Thursday's Children, about a school for deaf children, narrated by Richard Burton.

Claude Berri, who is perhaps best known for Jean de Florette and its sequel, Manon of the Spring (both 1986 Frances, 1987 US), burst onto the scene with his first film, the poignant masterpiece, The Two of Us.

What made The Two of Us stand out was that it was the first film to show the majority of the French citizenry during World War II to be neither Nazi sympathizers nor resistance fighters, but merely people going about their daily lives as best they could. The film tells the simple story of a young boy sent by his parents to live in the country with an elderly couple who have agreed to pose as his grandparents and the growing affection between the old man and the little boy. The elderly couple doesn't know the boy is Jewish and the boy's family doesn't know the elderly couple is anti-Semitic. The film provided the legendary Michel Simon (Boudu Saved from Drowning, L'Atalante) with a great late-career role, for which he won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. Alain Cohen (And They All Lived Happily Ever After) who played the boy and Berri are interviewed in the bonus material.
 
Eight months before The Godfather made Al Pacino a household name, Fox released Jerry Schatzberg's The Panic in Needle Park (1971). A love story set against a background of drug addiction, Pacino and Kitty Winn (The Exorcist) are perfectly matched. Winn's heartrending performance won her the Best Actress prize at Cannes. Winn, the grand-daughter of Gen. George Marshall, recently made news when she sold a painting given her grandfather by Winston Churchill for $1.2 million. Fox, which postponed the DVD release of this film several times, has finally released it along with another Pacino film Author! Author!

Author! Author! (1982), like most Arthur Hiller (Love Story, The Hospital) films, promises more than it delivers. Ostensibly a comedy, it plays more like a low-rent soap opera with Pacino as a playwright stuck raising five kids, four of whom were dumped on him by his ex-wife.

To coincide with the upcoming theatrical release of Live Free or Die Hard, Fox is re-issuing the previous three of the Bruce Willis Die Hard films in a box set along with a bonus disc on the history of the franchise and the making of the new film.

Willis became a star in TV's Moonlighting which ran for four seasons from 1985-1989, during which he made several films. His most successful film was the original 1988 thriller, Die Hard, directed by John McTiernan (The Hunt for Red October). The film was so successful it spawned an immediate sequel, 1990's Die Hard 2: Die Harder, directed by Renny Harlin (Cliffhanger) and later, 1995's Die Hard with a Vengeance, again directed by McTiernan. All three films were highly successful and Fox has subsequently released all three on DVD on at least three occasions. If you are among the legions of Die Hard fans and don't already own the three previous films you may want to buy the box set, but a re-purchase just to add the bonus disc to your collection may not be worth the expense.

Even if you are one of Lucille Ball's legions of fans, you may want to stay clear of Warner Bros. Lucille Ball Collection. While everything Ball touched on TV turned to gold, the same was not true of her big screen career.

Ball's best screen roles were in support of Katharine Hepburn in Stage Door (1937) and Without Love (1945)and later as a real-life mother of her own Brady bunch in Yours, Mine and Ours (1968). Prior to, and after that, her starring roles were bland at best.

The one gem in the collection is Dorothy Arzner's Dance, Girl, Dance (1940). Maureen O'Hara stars as a promising ballerina whose dreams fall apart when her company folds and she joins pal Lucy as "Bubbles" in a burlesque company. Arzner's (Craig's Wife) astute direction and the interplay between the two redheads (O'Hara and Ball) keep the film afloat.

Taken from a Damon Runyon (Lady for a Day, Little Miss Marker) story, The Big Street (1942), directed by Irving Reis (The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, Enchantment) is a huge disappointment. Henry Fonda was too strong an actor to be playing a sap who falls for a hardened gangster's moll and Ball too light an actress to be taken seriously as a tough dame without a conscience.

Du Barry Was a Lady (1943), directed by Roy Del Ruth (Topper Returns, The West Point Story) is inconsequential nonsense about a hat check clerk (Red Skelton) who dreams he is Louis XV and his girl Lucy is the notorious Madame du Barry. Gene Kelly also stars, but it is Virginia O'Brien singing "Salome" who gives the film its one bright moment.

Ball's fourth and final big screen teaming with Bob Hope was the dismal Critic's Choice (1963), directed by TV director Don Weis, in which Hope plays a sour critic jealous of wife Ball's newfound success as a writer. Adam's Rib it ain't.

On stage, Jerry Herman's Mame was a triumph for all concerned. A much anticipated film with original stage star Angela Lansbury never materialized. Instead Ball provided Warner Bros. with $5,000,000 of her own money to be considered for the lead in the film. For some reason, Ball had the crazy notion that Rosalind Russell stole her original Auntie Mame characterization from Ball's character in I Love Lucy. In any event, Lucy may have bought her way into 1974's Mame but she was about as convincing as everyone's favorite madcap aunt as Lyndon Johnson would have been as a ballet dancer.

Directed by Gene Saks (The Odd Couple, Cactus Flower), the film only comes to life when Saks' wife at the time, Bea Arthur, is on screen as Vera Charles. Ball's age (she was 64), her recent ski accident curtailing her movements, and her acceded-to demands that her vocals be used on all her songs, despite superior interpretations recorded by Lisa Kirk, all conspired against her. The film is best viewed in a highly inebriated state.

Miss Potter (2006), directed by Chris Noonan (Babe), is a sweet film about Beatrix Potter, the British author of The Tale of Peter Rabbit and an early conservationist. Made on a budget, the film doesn't provide much in the way of special effects, but makes up for them with its charming foray into its old-fashioned world. Renee Zellweger, perfectly cast as the demure author, gives a charming performance and is matched every step of the way by Ewan McGregor, Emily Watson, and a superb supporting cast.

Releasing on the TV front this week is Perry Mason, Season 2, Volume 1. (1958-1959). Perfectly cast with Raymond Burr as the intrepid defense attorney; Babara Hale as his loyal secretary, Della Street; William Hopper as his private investigator, Paul Drake; William Talmam as his nemesis, D.A. Hamilton Burger; and veteran character actor Ray Collins (Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons) as bumbling Lt. Tragg, this long-running series was, and is, a treat. Guest stars include Bruce Bennett, Mala Powers, Marie Windsor and other welcome familiar faces. Each episode runs ten to fifteen minutes longer than today's shows as commercial interruptions were not as frequent or prolonged in those days.

-Peter J. Patrick (June 20, 2007)

This week's DVD releases run the gamut from the original Nancy Drew, personified by the delightful Bonita Granville, to Jack Benny in drag in a long lost treasure, to Chris Cooper at his nutty best.

The new Nancy Drew seems to be marketed to nine- and ten-year-olds, the kind of film you plop a child down to see, but wouldn't be caught dead watching yourself. This is a far cry from the originals, based on the long-popular mystery novels, which were aimed at general audiences.

Nancy Drew has had many incarnations over the years. Pamela Sue Martin (Dynasty) made a forthright Nancy in the 1977-1978 TV series, which alternated with The Hardy Boys with Shaun Cassidy and Parker Stevenson as ABC's alternative programming to 60 Minutes, Sunday evenings. The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries - Volumes One & Two are now available on DVD and starting today, so are the originals.

Produced in 1938 and 1939, the original films starred 15-year-old Bonita Granville, just two to three years after she became the youngest actress then nominated for an Oscar as the brat in These Three.

Released by Warner Bros. under the tongue twisting title of The Original Nancy Drew Movie Mystery Collection, the set includes Nancy Drew Detective, Nancy Drew Reporter, Nancy Drew Trouble Shooter and Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase. Only Nancy Drew Reporter has been previously available on public domain DVDs of varying quality.

What sets the originals apart is the casting of the exuberant Granville, the equally talented Frankie Thomas (Tom Corbett, Space Cadet) as her friend Ted (inexplicably re-named Ned in the shallow new version) and John Litel (Dodge City) as her detective dad. It's a pity the series never continued beyond the first four films, but at least we have those. Granville later achieved even greater success as producer and occasional director of the long-running Lassie TV series.

Charley's Aunt is an old warhorse, first performed on Broadway in 1893 and on film in 1915. Successfully re-made in 1925 with Syd Chaplin (Charlie's brother) and as an early talkie in 1930 with Charlie Ruggles (Love Me Tonight, Ruggles of Red Gap), the property is better known today as the source material of Frank Loesser's musical Where's Charley?

The highly successful 1941 film version of Charley's Aunt with Jack Benny (To Be or Not to Be) has finally been released on DVD. This is the first time any of the various versions have been made available in any home video format. Directed by Archie Mayo (The Petrified Forest, Angel on My Shoulder), this triumphant mistaken identity farce in which Benny masquerades as his friend's aunt, was a major production that also starred Kay Francis, James Ellison, Anne Baxter, Edmund Gwenn, Reginald Owen, Laird Cregar, Arleen Whelan and Richard Haydn.

While most serious filmgoers were catching up with last year's Oscar entries, Universal came out with one of the new year's best films, Breach, in which Chris Cooper (American Beauty, Adaptation.) plays FBI agent Robert Hanssen who sells secrets to the Soviet Union. Ryan Philippe (Gosford Park, Flags of Our Fathers)has one of his best roles as