360 classic feature films: how an archive project sought to show the canon, all year round

Back in 1983, the BFI was riding high following the unprecedented success of Peter Greenaway’s The Draughtsman’s Contract. Suddenly having huge amounts of money was an unusual dilemma and, looking for ideas on how to spend it, BFI director Anthony Smith approached the late David Meeker, then booking officer for the National Film Theatre (now BFI Southbank). This was the birth of the ‘360 project’ or ‘Treasures from the NFTVA [National Film and Television Archive]’, fulfilling Meeker’s dream of building a repertory of classic world cinema in brand new prints for the exclusive use of the BFI. 

Meeker set about compiling a list of titles, initially 100 but later expanding to 360 to provide a year-round programme of classic features. These were only to be screened at the Museum of the Moving Image (MOMI) cinema (now NFT3) to ensure audiences could see good quality 35mm prints of great films on a regular basis. For each title fulfilled, a glossy programme note was produced with both filmographic information and details on the source of the print. 

It was always to be a very personal list. Meeker didn’t believe in programming by committee and, though he did seek advice from experts in certain national cinemas, it was very much shaped by his own taste. His omission of It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) and inclusion of three films directed by Jean-Pierre Melville caused eyebrows to be raised, but, as he said later: “If you don’t like it, do your own list. This is my list.” 

The most represented director is John Ford, with 10 features, while Alfred Hitchcock and Michael Powell (a close personal friend of Meeker’s in later years) each have seven. The list was never meant to be set in stone and tweaks were made over the years where prints proved difficult to obtain, or similar titles became available.

Foreign films were made without printed-in subtitles, which can date as language evolves, and Meeker had hoped for a system of electronic subtitling. This failed to appear and instead audiences listened to an actor reading the translated dialogue through a set of headphones fitted to each seat. If, when the film started, you found that your headphones didn’t work, you had the choice of a mad scrabble to find another seat, or watch the film in a haze of incomprehension.

To complement the archival project, head of BFI publishing Colin McCabe suggested a series of monographs and the ‘BFI Classics’ series was born. Meeker didn’t want books by the usual critics and ‘experts’, instead turning to his wide range of friends and contacts. One of the first was Salman Rushdie on The Wizard of Oz (1939), while Labour MP Gerald Kaufman contributed his reflections on Meet Me in St. Louis (1944). Actor and director Mai Zetterling approached Meeker wanting to write about The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), though sadly she died before submitting it.

By the time he retired in 2000, Meeker had managed to acquire or create around 167 of the 360 films, but the project was discontinued when he left and a different approach to classic film programming was developed. However, the publishing project continued, with Meeker as a consultant on the series for several more years. Eventually moving beyond David’s list, the monographs continue today and have proved a hugely successful format, which has been emulated by other publishers. 

Meeker’s 360 project was also adopted by other archives and cinematheques, who developed their own collections to provide national audiences with an excellent viewing experience. Meeker’s retirement coincided with the gradual replacement of 35mm prints by digital production and projection. Of course celluloid never completely disappeared, its importance championed by filmmakers like Martin Scorsese and Christopher Nolan, but digital remasters are now the way that most audiences enjoy classic cinema. 

However, film stock is still the best method of long-term preservation of the moving image, as well as being the preferred viewing format of many cinemagoers and the BFI’s Film on Film project is currently building a new collection of 35mm prints from a curated list of 100 titles. 

Cabiria (Giovanni Pastrone)

The Birth of a Nation (D.W. Griffith)
The Cheat (Cecil B. DeMille)

Les Vampires (Louis Feuillade)
Intolerance: Love’s Struggle Throughout the Ages (D.W. Griffith)
Judex (Louis Feuillade)

J’accuse (Abel Gance)
Tih Minh (Louis Feuillade)

Karin Ingmarsdotter (Victor Sjöström)
True Heart Susie (D.W. Griffith)
The Oyster Princess (Ernst Lubitsch)

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene)

La Roue (Abel Gance)

Foolish Wives (Erich von Stroheim)

Gunnar Hedes Saga (Mauritz Stiller)
Die Nibelungen – Ein deutsches Heldenlied I: Siegfrieds Tod (Fritz Lang)

Die Nibelungen – Ein deutsches Heldenlied Ii: Kriemhilds Rache (Fritz Lang)
The Last Laugh (F.W. Murnau)
The Navigator (Buster Keaton and Donald Crisp)
L’Inhumaine (Marcel L’Herbier)
The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr West in the Land of the Bolsheviks (Lev Kuleshov)
Greed (Erich von Stroheim)

Strike (Sergei M. Eisenstein)
The Gold Rush (Charles Chaplin)
The Freshman (Fred Newmeyer and Sam Taylor)
Faces of Children (Jacques Feyder)
The Unholy Three (Tod Browning)
Variety (E.A. Dupont)
Tumbleweeds (King Baggot)
Battleship Potemkin (Sergei M. Eisenstein)

Metropolis (Fritz Lang)
Mother (V.I. Pudovkin)
Dura Lex (Lev Kuleshov)
Hands Up! (Clarence Badger)
Flesh and the Devil (Clarence Brown)
The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (Alfred Hitchcock)
The Strong Man (Frank Capra)
Secrets of a Soul (G.W. Pabst)
Faust: Eine deutsche Volkssage (F.W. Murnau)
A Page of Madness (Teinosuke Kinugasa)
Napoléon (Abel Gance)

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (F.W. Murnau)
An Italian Straw Hat (René Clair)
Berlin, Symphony of a City (Walter Ruttmann)
The Crowd (King Vidor)
Love (Edmund Goulding)
The Man Who Laughs (Paul Leni)
Underworld (Josef Von Sternberg)

The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Th. Dreyer)
Steamboat Bill, Jr (Buster Keaton and Charles F. Reisner)
The House on Trubnaya Square (Boris Barnet)
October (Sergei M. Eisenstein)
The Wind (Victor Sjöström)
Queen Kelly (Erich von Stroheim)
Heimkehr (Joe May)
Pandora’s Box (G.W. Pabst)
Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov)
L’Argent (Marcel L’Herbier)
Asphalt (Joe May)
Spione (Fritz Lang)

Blackmail – silent version (Alfred Hitchcock)
Die wunderbare Lüge der Nina Petrowna (Hans Schwarz)
Piccadilly – silent version (E.A. Dupont)
People on Sunday (Robert Siodmak and Edgar G. Ulmer)
Applause (Rouben Mamoulian)

The Big Trail (Raoul Walsh)
Earth (Alexander P. Dovzhenko)
The Blue Angel (Josef Von Sternberg)
L’Age d’Or (Luis Buñuel)
Little Caesar (Mervyn LeRoy)
All Quiet on the Western Front (Lewis Milestone)

Ariane (Paul Czinner)
The Threepenny Opera – German version (G.W. Pabst)
Frankenstein (James Whale)
The Public Enemy (William A. Wellman)
M (Fritz Lang)
La Chienne (Jean Renoir)
City Lights (Charles Chaplin)
Le Million (René Clair)
Marius (Alexander Korda)
Love Me Tonight (Rouben Mamoulian)
Vampyr: Der Traum des Allan Gray (Carl Th. Dreyer)
Boudu Saved from Drowning (Jean Renoir)
Tavaszi Zápor/Marie, Légende Hongroise (Paul Fejös)
Scarface (Howard Hawks)
The Most Dangerous Game (Ernest B. Schoedsack and Irving Pichel)
Liebelei (Max Ophüls)
42nd Street (Lloyd Bacon)
King Kong (Ernest B. Schoedsack and Merian C. Cooper)

Spring Silkworms (Cheng Bugao)
Daybreak (Sun Yu)
Queen Christina (Rouben Mamoulian)
Hallelujah I’m a Bum (Lewis Milestone)
Duck Soup (Leo McCarey)

L’Atalante (Jean Vigo)
La signora di tutti (Max Ophüls)
It Happened One Night (Frank Capra)
It’s a Gift (Norman Z McLeod)
The Scarlet Empress (Josef Von Sternberg)
The Goddess (Wu Yonggang)

Toni (Jean Renoir)
Novyi Gulliver (Aleksander Ptushko)
Carnival in Flanders – French version (Jacques Feyder)
First a Girl (Victor Saville)
A Night at the Opera (Sam Wood)
Wife, Be like a Rose (Mikio Naruse)
Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale)

La Belle Equipe (Julien Duvivier)
Triumph of the Will (Leni Riefenstahl)
Modern Times (Charles Chaplin)
Story of a Cheat (Sacha Guitry)
Rembrandt (Alexander Korda)
Things to Come (William Cameron Menzies)
Swing Time (George Stevens)
Show Boat (James Whale)
César (Marcel Pagnol)

Way Out West (James W. Horne)
Pépé le Moko (Julien Duvivier)
Nothing Sacred (William A. Wellman)
La Grande Illusion (Jean Renoir)
Street Angel (Yuan Muzhi)
The Pearls of the Crown (Sacha Guitry)
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (David Hand)
Un carnet de bal (Julien Duvivier)
Oh, Mr. Porter! (Marcel Varnel)

Bringing Up Baby (Howard Hawks)
Jezebel (William Wyler)
Olympia (Leni Riefenstahl)
La Bête humaine (Jean Renoir)
Le Quai des brumes (Marcel Carné)
Alexander Nevsky (Sergei Eisenstein)
Stolen Death (Nyrki Tapiovaara)

The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming)
Only Angels Have Wings (Howard Hawks)
La Règle du jeu (Jean Renoir)
Stagecoach (John Ford)
Le jour se lève (Marcel Carné)
The Story of Late Chrysanthemums (Kenji Mizoguchi)

The Grapes of Wrath (John Ford)
The Thief of Bagdad (Ludwig Berger, Michael Powell and Tim Whelan)
Fantasia (Walt Disney)

Remorques (Jean Grémillon)
Citizen Kane (Orson Welles)
Sullivan’s Travels (Preston Sturges)
The Maltese Falcon (John Huston)

La Nuit fantastique (Marcel L’Herbier)
The Magnificent Ambersons (Orson Welles)
Aniki Bóbó (Manoel De Oliveira)
Ossessione (Luchino Visconti)
Went the Day Well? (Alberto Cavalcanti)
The Palm Beach Story (Preston Sturges)
To Be or Not to Be (Ernst Lubitsch)
Casablanca (Michael Curtiz)
Le Corbeau (Henri-Georges Clouzot)
Cat People (Jacques Tourneur)

Douce (Claude Autant-Lara)
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)
Fires Were Started (Humphrey Jennings)
I Walked with a Zombie (Jacques Tourneur)
Millions like Us (Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat)

Ivan the Terrible (Sergei Eisenstein)
Henry V (Laurence Olivier)
Meet Me in St. Louis (Vincente Minnelli)
Laura (Otto Preminger)
Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder)
To Have and Have Not (Howard Hawks)

Les Enfants du paradis (Marcel Carné)
Brief Encounter (David Lean)
Rome Open City (Roberto Rossellini)
A Walk in the Sun (Lewis Milestone)
I Know Where I’m Going! (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)
Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (Robert Bresson)
G.I. Joe (William A. Wellman)

Ivan the Terrible Part II (Sergei Eisenstein)
La Belle et la Bete (Jean Cocteau)
The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks)
My Darling Clementine (John Ford)
The Best Years of Our Lives (William Wyler)
A Matter of Life and Death (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)
Leave Her to Heaven (John M. Stahl)
Great Expectations (David Lean)

Odd Man Out (Carol Reed)
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (Joseph L. Mankiewicz)
Black Narcissus (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)
The Spring River Flows East (Chi Chusheng and Zheng Junli)
Jour de fête (Jacques Tati)

Red River (Howard Hawks)
Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio De Sica)
Letter from an Unknown Woman (Max Ophuls)
Fort Apache (John Ford)
The Red Shoes (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)
Moonrise (Frank Borzage)
Une si jolie petite plage (Marc Allégret)
Criss Cross (Robert Siodmak)

White Heat (Raoul Walsh)
Gun Crazy (Joseph H. Lewis)
Crows and Sparrows (Zheng Junli)
Kind Hearts and Coronets (Robert Hamer)
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (John Ford)
Les Enfants terribles (Jean-Pierre Melville)
The Third Man (Carol Reed)

Cyrano de Bergerac (Michael Gordon)
In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray)
The Asphalt Jungle (John Huston)
Los olvidados (Luis Buñuel)
Orphée (JeanCocteau)
Rio Grande (John Ford)
Wagon Master (John Ford)
Sunset Blvd. (Billy Wilder)
Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa)
La Ronde (Max Ophuls)

Miss Julie (Alf Sjoberg)
The Medium (GianCarlo Menotti)
Strangers on a Train (Alfred Hitchcock)
The Thing from Another World (Christian Nyby)

Singin’ in the Rain (Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly)
M. Hulot’s Holiday (Jacques Tati)
High Noon (Fred Zinnemann)
Ikiru (Akira Kurosawa)
The Quiet Man (John Ford)
Jeux interdits (René Clement)
Casque d’or (Jacques Becker)
El (Luis Buñuel)

Shane (George Stevens)
The Band Wagon (Vincente Minnelli)
From Here to Eternity (Fred Zinnemann)
Tokyo Story (Yasujiro Ozu)
The Big Heat (Fritz Lang)

Sansho Dayu (Kenji Mizoguchi)
Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa)
A Generation (Andrzej Wajda)
On the Waterfront (Elia Kazan)
A Star Is Born (George Cukor)

Lola Montes (Max Ophuls)
Richard III (Laurence Olivier)
French Cancan (Jean Renoir)
Kiss Me Deadly (Robert Aldrich)
The Man from Laramie (Anthony Mann)
The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton)
Tales of the Taira Clan (Kenji Mizoguchi)
Pather Panchali (Satyajit Ray)

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Don Siegel)
The Searchers (John Ford)
Aparajito (Satyajit Ray)
Bob le flambeur (Jean-Pierre Melville)
A Man Escaped (Robert Bresson)
Written on the Wind (Douglas Sirk)

The Seventh Seal (Ingmar Bergman)
Mother India (Mehboob Khan)
The Tall T (Budd Boetticher)
Wild Strawberries (Ingmar Bergman)
Kanal (Andrzej Wajda)
Sweet Smell of Success (Alexander Mackendrick)
Paths of Glory (Stanley Kubrick)
Throne of Blood (Akira Kurosawa)
The House of the Angel (Leopold Torre-Nilsson)
Forty Guns (Samuel Fuller)
Nights of Cabiria (Federico Fellini)

The World of Apu (Satyajit Ray)
Ashes and Diamonds (Andrzej Wajda)
Eroica (Andrzej Munk)
Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock)
Conflagration (Kon Ichikawa)
Touch of Evil (Orson Welles)
Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks)
The Music Room (Satyajit Ray)

Shadows (John Cassavetes)
The Human Condition I : No Greater Love (Masaki Kobayashi)
The Human Condition II: Road to Eternity (Masaki Kobayashi)
Hiroshima mon amour (Alain Resnais)
Les Cousins (Claude Chabrol)
Some Like It Hot (Billy Wilder)
Pickpocket (Robert Bresson)

L’avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni)
À bout de souffle (Jean-Luc Godard)
Peeping Tom (Michael Powell)
The Human Condition III : A Soldier’s Prayer (Masaki Kobayashi)
Paris nous appartient (Jacques Rivette)
Rocco and His Brothers (Luchino Visconti)
Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock)
Lola (Jacques Demy)
The Lady with the Little Dog (Iosif Heifitz)

One-Eyed Jacks (Marlon Brando)
Viridiana (Luis Bunuel)
Accattone (Pier Paolo Pasolini)
Last Year at Marienbad (Alain Resnais)
Il posto (Ermanno Olmi)

Jules et Jim (François Truffaut)
Lolita (Stanley Kubrick)
Cleo from 5 to 7 (Agnès Varda)
Adieu Philippine (Jacques Rozier)
Knife in the Water (Roman Polanski)
The Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer)
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford)
Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean)

The Nutty Professor (Jerry Lewis)
The Servant (Joseph Losey)
Le Feu follet (Louis Malle)
An Actor’s Revenge (Kon Ichikawa)
Le Mépris (Jean-Luc Godard)
The Birds (Alfred Hitchcock)
Judex (Georges Franju)
8 ½ (Federico Fellini)

Marnie (Alfred Hitchcock)
Charulata (Satyajit Ray)
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Jacques Demy)
Two Stage Sisters (Xie Jin)

The Round-Up (Miklos Jancso)
Repulsion (Roman Polanski)
Pierrot le fou (Jean-Luc Godard)
Fists in the Pocket (Marco Bellocchio)

Yesterday Girl (Alexander Kluge)
Le Deuxième Souffle (Jean-Pierre Melville)
Mouchette (Robert Bresson)
Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky)

Le Samourai (Jean-Pierre Melville)
The Fireman’s Ball (Milos Forman)
The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre (Roger Corman)
Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn)
Belle de jour (Luis Bunuel)

If…. (Lindsay Anderson)
Night of the Living Dead (George A. Romero)
2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick)
The Hour of the Furnaces (Octavio Getino and Fernando Solanas)
Once upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone)
Memories of Underdevelopment (Tomas Gutierrez Alea)

The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah)
My Night with Maud (Éric Rohmer)
A Touch of Zen (King Hu)
MASH (Robert Altman)
The Colour of Pomegranates (Sergei Parajanov)

Four Moods (Li Han-Hsiang, Li Hsing, Cai Ching-jui and Hu Jinquan)
The Spider’s Stratagem (Bernardo Bertolucci)
Le Boucher (Claude Chabrol)
The Conformist (Bernardo Bertolucci)
The Sorrow and the Pity (Marcel Ophuls)
Performance (Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg)

Blanche (Walerian Borowczyk)

Cries and Whispers (Ingmar Bergman)
Tout va bien (Jean-Luc Godard)
The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola)

Mean Streets (Martin Scorsese)
Fear Eats the Soul (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
The Spirit of the Beehive (Victor Erice)
Day for Night (François Truffaut)

Chinatown (Roman Polanski)
Alice in the Cities (Wim Wenders)
The Godfather Part II (Francis Ford Coppola)

Manila in the Claws of Light (Lino Brocka)
The Travelling Players (Theo Angelopoulos)

In the Realm of the Senses (Nagisa Oshima)
The Shootist (Don Siegel)
Assault on Precinct 13 (John Carpenter)
Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese)
Illustrious Corpses (Franceco Rosi)
The Ascent (Larisa Shepitko)

Annie Hall (Woody Allen)

The Scar (Cherd Songsri)
The Tree of Wooden Clogs (Ermanno Olmi)

Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola)
The Herd (Zeki Okten)

Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese)

Mad Max 2 (George Miller)
Thief (Michael Mann)

Yellow Earth (Chen Kaige)

Hannah and Her Sisters (Woody Allen)

À propos de Nice (Jean Vigo, Boris Kaufman) to be shown with Man with a Movie Camera    

In der nacht (Walther Ruttman ) to be shown with People on Sunday   

Hollywood Newsreel (George R Bilson) to be shown with The Public Enemy

The Face Behind the Mask (Jacques Tourneur) to be shown with Cat People