National Film Registry Adds In Cold Blood, Johnny Guitar, Deliverance

On Tuesday, Librarian of Congress James Billington announced his selections of the twenty-five movies added to the National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant. Among the honorees of gay interest are In Cold Blood (1967) and bisexual Nicholas Ray's so-called "lesbian western" Johnny Guitar (1954) starring Joan Crawford and Mercedes McCambridge. Also added was Deliverance, whose male rape scene epitomized for decades America's horror of sex between men. Among the other films were Sergeant York, A Face in the Crowd, The Asphalt Jungle, The Invisible Man, and The Terminator, as well as the predominantly Asian Flower Drum Song (1961) and the all black Hallelujah (1929). These selections bring the total number of movies in the twenty-year-old registry to five hundred. As their website explains, "These films are not selected as the 'best' American films of all time, but rather as works of enduring significance to American culture."