The mystery list is another one that seems poorly conceived. Unlike animation, “mystery” may be a genre, but the way it is defined and applied in the AFI list leads to a muddled selection of films.
The AFI defines mystery as “a genre that revolves around the solution of a crime”. I'm not convinced that that adequately describes the films on the list, or, even if it does, it is absurdly reductive. Most ironically, the definition seems least appropriate when applied to the list's top selection, Vertigo (1958), which does not actually revolve around the solution of a crime at all, but a domestic mystery, and is really about Scottie's (Jimmy Stewart) inner-demons and obsessions in any event. Similar questions can be raised about other movies on this Top 10.
For example, the second film on the list, Chinatown (1974), certainly starts with a mysterious murder, but part of the point of the film is that some “crimes” aren't illegal at all, and may even be facilitated by laws. The plot of The Third Man (1949) involves the unveiling of criminal activity, but the central mystery, on more than one level, proves not to be a crime, or at least is vague enough for questions to be raised about whether it is or isn't. And, as was highlighted on the broadcast, Dial M for Murder (1954) is really more about the commission of a crime than its solution. You get the picture: the AFI definition for this genre is fine as far as it goes, but it misses the nuances in most of the films on the list.
In fact, it can be argued that most of the films on this Top 10 are typically considered to belong to more refined categories than “mystery”. Chinatown, The Third Man, and The Maltese Falcon (1941) are better thought of as Film Noir, as should North by Northwest (1959), though I recognize that that may be a less typical way of understanding that movie than it is for the others. Another segment of the selections – Vertigo, Rear Window (1954), Dial M for Murder – are more precisely “suspense” movies or “thrillers”, wherein mystery, rather than being the point of the narrative, is merely a device for exploring the human psyche. This leaves three movies as the “true” mysteries on the list. From what I know of Laura (1944), I've not seen it, this seems like a fair enough categorization, and I think that “mystery” is reasonable as a way of thinking about The Usual Suspects (1995). Blue Velvet (1986) I'm tempted to say belongs to the genre of “David Lynch,” but it is also clearly the case that a mystery drives much of the film's action.
What's curious about the AFI's choice to use and apply “mystery” to the films that it does is that the alternatives I suggest, “noir”, “suspense”, “thriller”, are also well-used genre categories, and ones that better capture one of my points above: these movies largely use mysteries to explore other themes – power, obsession, fear, evil. There are, however, films where the mystery is the thing. Think The Thin Man series, or the incarnations of Nancy Drew, or adaptations of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple books. I suppose the orchestrators of these lists may have considered this, and decided that there aren't enough such movies to “honor”, but that's not only narrow-minded, especially in the context of genre entertainment, it also begs the question of why “mystery” and not “noir”, “thriller”, etc.
Assessing the individual selections is made complicated by the underlying categorization question. I can see where each of the films on the list can and should be honored on a Top 10 in “x” genre, even if I don't quite see it for this particular accounting. However, Vertigo is, like The Searchers and Shane from the Western list, one of those highly regarded “classics” that I don't quite get. To me it seems dated in its fascination with mid-century popular psychology, and its visualizations of feelings of vertigo don't hold up well at all. That the latter is important to me is probably a function of the former. I vastly prefer Rear Window, and, as to the non-Hitchcock on the list, Chinatown is one of those films I will routinely cite as my absolute favorite when asked. Everything else more or less depends on context and I'm not sure that the AFI has provided the right one here.
Link to introduction.
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Short-Circuit Signs