To commemorate the first century of American moviemaking, the American Film Institute has embarked on a celebration of America's greatest movies. The centerpiece of this unprecedented celebration is the selection of the 100 greatest American movies of all time, as determined by leaders from across the American film community. Choosing from a list of 400 American movies compiled by AFI historians, this blue-ribbon panel has selected the 100 greatest feature films, judging such factors as critical recognition, major award winners, popularity over time, historical significance and cultural impact. AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies was originally broadcast as a three-hour CBS Primetime Special on June 16, 1998, during which the 100 greatest movies were first revealed. This centennial celebration of American movies is unprecedented in its scope.

Buried treasure, of course. But, more importantly, of states of grace — spiritual, secular, sexual. Quests are another essential movie form. They are often the occasion for mighty spectacle, high-impact action. But as we'll show, the questing impulse is no less powerful when it comes to a man trapped in a room alone. Films include: THE GOLD RUSH, THE GRAPES OF WRATH, BEN-HUR, ROCKY, VERTIGO, THE SEARCHERS, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, FORREST GUMP.

They are the outcasts. They make their own rules, they live outside the law, they have no need for our love, anybody's love. But we love them anyway — for the boldness of their transgressions, the way they express our ultimate fantasy — that once, just once, we might do what we want to do and not count the consequences. By including here the film that made John Wayne a star — playing, don't forget, an outcast — we mean to suggest how often what seems to be conventional American heroism partakes of the antiheroic. Films include: CITIZEN KANE, NORTH BY NORTHWEST, BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID, THE WILD BUNCH, M*A*S*H, TAXI DRIVER, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, RAGING BULL.

Some are surreal — Chaplin trapped in the toils of a modern factory, the Marx Brothers in Freedonia. Some are completely unreal — Disney's animated creations. But most of the figures we'll be looking at here are, in one way or another, space voyagers. What they have in common is their capacity to lift us out of quotidian reality, into realms of pure imagination. What medium does this better than the movies? Or is likely to do so more often, more powerfully in the new millennium? How better to conclude our series than with this trip back to the future as the movies have imagined it. How better to suggest that there are always new worlds for filmmakers to imagine and to conquer in the millennium ahead. Films include: MODERN TIMES, DUCK SOUP, SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS, THE WIZARD OF OZ, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, STAR WARS.