The usually stone-cold hearts of American movie critics have been softened and set all aflutter by Martin Scorsese’s love letter to early cinema disguised as tyke gone wild adventure Hugo.
We haven’t had a chance to catch up with Hugo just yet, but the film’s nostalgic save-capital-C-cinema bent definitely seems to hit something that’s been in the air of late. (The Classical columnist Nick Pinkerton spent the 17th iteration of his weekly rant on just this topic.) If you care at all about movies, then we’d recommend the stellar new documentary These Amazing Shadows, which offers a behind-the-scenes peek at the folks at the National Film Registry who preserve our cinematic history.
These Amazing Shadows: What do the films Casablanca, Blazing Saddles and West Side Story have in common? Besides being popular, they have also been deemed “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant” by the Library of Congress and listed on The National Film Registry. These Amazing Shadows tells the history and importance of the Registry, a roll call of American cinema treasures that reflects the diversity of film, and indeed the American experience itself. The current list of 550 films includes selections from every genre – documentaries, home movies, Hollywood classics, avant-garde, newsreels and silent films. These Amazing Shadows reveals how American movies tell us so much about ourselves…”not just what we did, but what we thought, what we felt, what we aspired to, and the lies we told ourselves”.