They call it America’s family album. And that’s really corny, but essentially correct. If there can be a summary in pictures of our nation’s shared experiences, it must exist in the many American movies deemed “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant” enough to have earned protective preservation from the government.
That’s the medium-sized but true enough idea behind directors Paul Mariano and Kurt Norton’s documentary These Amazing Shadows, an affable infomercial about the National Film Registry. Of all the family albums you might ever have to sit down and politely flip through, this one is impressively unboring. For starters, the pictures being motion pictures, they helpfully flip through themselves. They’re also generally entertaining and even sometimes quite good.
Prompted by Ted Turner’s late-1980s colorization craze, which it sought to rectify, the National Film Registry has since maintained an ever-growing trove of significant films, and a mandate to properly illuminate their cultural context for the benefit of future generations. In addition to the expected titles, ranging widely in demeanor from Citizen Kane to Star Wars, the list also includes home movies, strange commercials, Michael Jackson’s Thriller video and that little animated Let’s All Go to the Lobby ditty that used to urge multiplex moviegoers to visit the concession stand.
“It’s a different form of honor than getting an Academy Award,” says critic Leonard Maltin, one of many familiar talking heads, of being on the list. “It’s a more cumulative or retrospective kind of honor. It’s saying your film has stood the test of time.”
This partly explains why Mariano and Norton’s film would be right at home during an Oscars telecast, as one of those gauzily glamorized interludes they fade in and out from while the host changes costumes and you go to the bathroom. It also should be said that in the same way classic black-and-white movies look better in classic black-and-white than in cheesy, later-added color, those choice moments from, say, 2001: A Space Odyssey do sound better with their original soundtrack of Johann Strauss’ “Blue Danube” waltz than with These Amazing Shadows‘ fawning, generically lush, awards-show-style orchestral score.
