'70s films among 25 added to Film Registry

Surely the late Leslie Nielsen, who died Nov. 28, would have chuckled to see his 1980 disaster-movie spoof "Airplane!" included in the Library of Congress's National Film Registry, which Tuesday released its annual list of "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant films."

The list of 25 titles to be preserved for all-time also honored the 1980 "Star Wars" sequel "The Empire Strikes Back," whose director, Irvin Kershner, died the day before Nielsen, and the 1964 comedy "The Pink Panther," directed and co-written by Blake Edwards, who died earlier this month.

Though leaning heavily on films from the 1970s, the list covers a broad range of eras and genres. Many titles will be instantly familiar to movie-lovers, such as William Friedkin's influential 1973 horror film "The Exorcist," the 1976 Watergate exposé "All The President's Men" and the 1977 time-capsule "Saturday Night Fever." The most recent entries are Spike Lee's 1992 biopic "Malcolm X," which starred Denzel Washington as the controversial black leader, and Peter Hutton's 1996 "Study of a River," a wintry portrait of the Hudson River.

There are also early works from cinematic giants, including Elia Kazan's 1946 feature debut, "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn"; John Huston's long-unseen 1946 war documentary "Let There Be Light"; and George Lucas' 1967 student short "Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB."

Films must be 10 years old before becoming eligible for inclusion in the Registry, which now holds 550 titles. Librarian of Congress James H. Billington called the preservation project a reminder that "about half of the films produced before 1950 and as much as 90 percent of those made before 1920 have been lost to future generations."