Meg and John P. Brogan Classic 100
Since the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center Classic 100 list was introduced in 2007, we have had an overwhelmingly positive response to the programs we have curated. Over the past year, we have been able to present retrospectives by filmmakers such as Akira Kurosawa and Charlie Chaplin and historical movements such as the French New Wave thanks to the generous support of the Meg and John P. Brogan Endowment for cinema. This year, we have decided to make some changes to the list based on a variety of factors.
The list was originally designed to give Notre Dame students the opportunity to see one hundred of the greatest films ever produced over the course of their four years of academic study. Many factors were considered in the original selection process: Academy Award winners for Best Picture and Best Foreign Language Film, the American Film Institute’s Top 100 list (which has also been revised in the 10 years since it was first announced), the Library of Congress National Film Registry, best film lists from critics such as Roger Ebert, consultation with campus experts in film studies. Even the Vatican has its picks which include a refreshingly diverse collection of films from around the world.
In preparing this revision, we incorporated these criteria as well as some new metrics. The painstaking work of the expertly curated Criterion DVD Collection has made countless classics available to many viewers for the first time and provided an instance of an increasing and evolving canon. We also considered a wider spectrum of individual lists from critics and scholars which allowed us to give greater emphasis to international cinema.
Despite all of these efforts, a list such as this is inherently subjective. In 2010, the organizers of the Toronto Film published their own top 100. In deciding how to compile this list, the festival programmers merged the choices of audience members with those of “experts” -- fellow programmers, critics and film scholars which yielded some interesting results. Their list includes Slumdog Millionaire, a film widely-heralded following its initial release but has since come under greater critical scrutiny. Will a film like this have the same resonance in five or ten years or will its “honeymoon period” be over? This is not to critique the individual film but to recognize that canons can often be more productive when they are subject to a periodic review.
Our ultimate goal is to give our audiences a broad selection of culturally significant works that attest to the dynamic and evolving history of cinema and we hope that this list exemplifies these ideals.
