AFInity: The General

By Kim Hollis

July 6, 2010

He seems to be doing it wrong.

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We're a list society. From Casey Kasem and the American Top 40 to 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die to BOP's very own Best Horror Films (one of our most popular features ever), people love to talk about lists. They love to debate the merits of the "winners" and bemoan the exclusions, and start the whole process again when a new list captures pop culture fancy.

Perhaps one of the best-known, most widely discussed lists is the American Film Institute's 100 Years... 100 Movies. A non-profit organization known for its efforts at film restoration and screen education, the AFI list of the 100 best American movies was chosen by 1,500 leaders in the movie industry and announced in its first version in 1998. Since then, the 100 Years... 100 Movies list has proven to be so popular that the AFI came forth with a 10th anniversary edition in 2007, along with other series such as 100 Heroes and Villains, 100 Musicals, 100 Laughs and 100 Thrills.

In addition to talking about which films are deserving of being on the list and bitterly shaking our fists because a beloved film was left out, we also love to brag about the number of movies we've seen. As I was looking over the 100 Years... 100 Movies list recently, I realized that I've seen 47 - less than half. As a lover of film and writer/editor for a movie site, this seemed like a wrong that needed to remedied. And so an idea was born. I would watch all 100 movies on the 2007 10th Anniversary list - some of them for the first time in as much as 20 or more years - and ponder their relevance, worthiness and influence on today's film industry. With luck, I'll even discover a few new favorites along the way.




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#18: The General

When I was a kid, my family used to frequently dine out at a restaurant called Ground Round (it's still in business, though not in my hometown). It had a super fun atmosphere, as they had peanuts available to nosh on (and encouraged patrons to throw the shells on the floor) and served popcorn instead of bread. My memory tells me that they even had a fortune-telling machine, though that might just be something I'm making up to enhance its awesomeness. What I do know for certain is that in the dining area, the restaurant had a movie screen on which they played silent movies, and I always thought that was the most fantastic thing in the world.. Sure, it was quaint, but it was my kind of quaint.

Yet, since those Ground Round days, I believe the only silent film I had watched was Fritz Lang's Metropolis. It's certainly not because of any aversion I have to silent cinema - in fact, I rather like watching the emotive actors as their words are then displayed on screen, all while accompanied by perfectly melodramatic music to highlight the action. I just don't really think about watching silent movies unless there's a reason to do so.


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