From documenting significant news events of the early 20th century to breakthroughs in computer generated entertainment, the 25 motion pictures added today to the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry span a century of cinematic change.

“The films we chose are not necessarily the ‘best’ American films ever made or the most famous, but they are films that continue to have cultural, historical or aesthetic significance- and in many cases represent countless other films also deserving of recognition,” stated Librarian of Congress James H. Billington in a statement released this morning.

The earliest films named to the list this year showcase the emerging art of cinema’s ability to record events as they happen. San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, April 18, 1906 (1906) captured one of the country’s worst natural disasters on film while Jeffries-Johnson World’s Championship Boxing Contest (1910) is a record of the celebrated boxing match that helped defined race relations for the rest of the century

At the other end of the century, the film technology revolution is represented by director John Lasseter’s Toy Story (1995), the first fully computer animated feature length movie. Previously, Lasseter’s 1988 computer animated short film Tin Toy was named to the National Film Registry in 2003.

Comedies are well represented in this year’s honorees, ranging from early silent features like Hands Up (1926), from nearly forgotten silent comic actor Raymond Griffith, and Buster Keaton’s The Cameraman (1928) to 1982’s classic teen comedy Fast Times At Ridgemont High. Musical comedy The Ricky Horror Picture Show (1975) was named to the list for its redefining the term “cult classic.”

Several of the films name carry historic importance for their social impact. The Barbara Stanwyck melodrama Baby Face (1933) so scandalized audiences with its depiction of a ruthless social climber who sleeps with whomever would give her what she wanted that it is has been listed as one of the films that directly led to the introduction of the Production Code in 1934. (An early pre-release edit of Baby Face was discovered in the Library of Congress’ archives in late 2004. You can read the story here.)  Director Bill Jersey’s 1966 cinema verite documentary A Time For Burning chronicles the turbulent civil rights movement as it effects the congregation of a Nebraskan Lutheran church.

Other films on the list range from Ralph Steiner’s experimental H2O (1929) to such popular classics as The French Connection (1971) and The Sting (1973) to the musical The Music Man (1962) to the documentaries The Buffalo Creek Flood: An Act Of Man (1975) and Hoop Dreams (1994).

Under the terms of the National Film Preservation Act, the Librarian of Congress is tasked with choosing 25 “culturally, historically or aesthetically” significant films to be added to the National Film Registry each year. Started in 1989, the titles announced today bring the total number of films on the Registry to 425. The films on the list range from silent classics Intolerance (1919) and It (1927) to popular blockbusters like Star Wars (1977) and Raiders Of The Lost Ark (1981) to historically important film footage such as the Hindenburg Disaster Newsreel Footage (1937) and Abraham Zapruder’s infamous home movie footage of the John F. Kennedy assasination.

The complete list of films added to the Registry is as follows-

• Baby Face(1933)
• The Buffalo Creek Flood: An Act of Man (1975)
• The Cameraman (1928)
• Commandment Keeper Church, Beaufort South Carolina, May 1940 (1940)
• Cool Hand Luke (1967)
• Fast Times at Ridgemont High(1982)
• The French Connection (1971)
• Giant (1956)
• H2O (1929)
• Hands Up (1926)
• Hoop Dreams (1994)
• House of Usher (1960)
• Imitation of Life (1934)
• Jeffries-Johnson World’s Championship Boxing Contest (1910)
• Making of an American (1920)
• Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
• Mom and Dad (1944)
• The Music Man (1962)
• Power of the Press (1928)
• A Raisin in the Sun (1961)
• The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)
• San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, April 18, 1906 (1906)
• The Sting (1973)
• A Time for Burning (1966)
• Toy Story (1995)

Story Treatment by Steven Spielberg and Melissa Mathison

Even before the summer of 1982 was half over, it had become obvious that Steven Spielberg’s E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial was well on its way to becoming not only the highest grossing film of the summer, but of all time. It seemed that critics and audiences alike where captivated by Spielberg’s story of a young boy who befriends a stranded alien and helps him escape the government and return home. By the end of its initial theatrical run, the film had pulled a little over $359 million at the box office, out-grossing Star Wars’ $307 million record set five years previously. And, as is often the case with successful films, everyone’s thoughts soon turned to sequels.

At some point during the heady excitement of E.T.’s opening weeks, Spielberg and E.T. screenwriter Melissa Mathison sat down and quickly collaborated on a nine page story, dated July 17, 1982, treatment titled E.T. II: Nocturnal Fears.

The story opens with the landing of a familiar looking spaceship in a familiar looking forest clearing. A hatch slides open, revealing a familiar silhouette. But the extra-terrestrials inside aren’t the friendly scientists like E.T. was. They are an offshoot of E.T.’s race, an albino mutation who are evil and have been at war with E.T.’s people for decades. The aliens, under the command of one called Korel, are investigating the distress signal sent by E.T. in the first film. The interior of their ship is filled with “large plants and animal-like beasts in cages of light.”

Meanwhile, the school year is just about ending for Elliott and his siblings Michael and Gertie. They children are closer to each other thanks to their adventures, though there is an undercurrent of loneliness, as the three miss their alien friend. Their mother Mary – who is now dating the key-jingling scientist who led the government’s search for E.T. – is concerned and hoping that time will help ease her three children’s depression. On the roof of their home is E.T.’s improvised radio, still pointed out to space, listening for a message. (This is an idea from the first movie’s original ending. Some time after E.T. had departed Earth, we are shown Elliott, Michael and their friends sitting around the kitchen table. They are once again playing Dungeons & Dragons, but this time Elliot is clearly in charge of the game. The camera begins to rise away from the group, through the kitchen skylight to the roof where the radio is revealed pointed skyward. Although cut from release the scene did appear on the laserdisc and DVD release as an extra feature.)

Elliott soon gets a feeling that E.T. may have returned and he, along with Michael, Gertie and their friends head out to the forest clearing where E.T. left Earth. There they discover the alien’s ship and are captured. In perhaps a twist on the originals film’s capture and examination of E.T. by government scientists, the children are examined by Korel and the other extra-terrestrials. Korel also tortures Elliot for information about E.T., whose real name we learn is Zrek. It is during this torture that Elliot screams out for E.T.’s help, a plea that echoes through the woods and possibly up into the stars.

Back at Elliott’s home, Mary and Dr. Keys discover that the children are missing. Going up to the roof, they find a message on E.T.’s radio- “ET help Elliott soon.” The two rush out to the forest clearing.

E.T. finally arrives, freeing the children from their cages. He reprograms Korel’s ship to head for “a remote corner of the galaxy.” Elliott and E.T. have a tearful reunion before E.T. reboards his own mothership and again heads back into the stars.

While the treatment is obviously not much more than the skeleton of the proposed story, there are a few flaws inherent in the material. The biggest problem is that there isn’t much story material for a two hour film. Also, with the film’s title character, E.T., not appearing until the film’s climactic scenes, the movie runs the high risk of angering audiences who would be expecting him to be the focal point of the story.

The idea for the evil offshoot of E.T.’s race can be traced back to another unrealized Spielberg project Night Skies. Conceived as a follow-up to Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Night Skies was to be the story of a family whose home is terrorized by aliens. Spielberg pitched the story to executives at Universal Studios as “Straw Dogs with aliens,” while screenwriter John Sayles, who had been hired to develop the script, has stated that he used the 1939 Henry Fonda western Drums Along The Mohawk as a model. Pre-production on the film had begun with up and coming special effects whiz Rick Baker designing the attacking aliens, when Spielberg decided to pull the plug on the project to instead concentrate on another story of aliens on Earth which would become E.T.. Spielberg would recycle the family-under-siege idea, substituting the aliens with the supernatural, for Poltergeist which he co-wrote and produced.

It wasn’t soon after the writing of the treatment that Spielberg decided to drop the idea of doing a sequel. Perhaps Spielberg realized that it would be a fool’s errand to try and follow-up one of the most critically well-received film of its time. As he was reported to have remarked at the time, a sequel to E.T. “would do nothing but rob the original of its virginity.” Frank Sanello’s biography Spielberg: The Man, The Movies, The Mythology reports the director saying a bit more pragmatically at the time “I’m not about to join the Wall Street generation.”