Top Ten 1940s
Tuesday, July 9, 2013 at 11:33PM We're almost done with these quickie surveys of my favorites and yours from decades past. Herewith the 1940s which I hesitated jotting down as there are more classics from this decade that I haven't seen than in arguably any other. If I keep waiting until I've watched everything it would never be posted. In truth, I need a project which forces me to fully deal with the gaps in my 40s viewing. A pleasurable project it would be, surely. But for now, off the top of my list-manic head....
Black Narcissus (1947)
top ten
01 The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)
02 Casablanca (1943)
03 The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
04 Meet Me in St Louis (1944)
05 Double Indemnity (1944)
06 Black Narcissus (1947)
07 Citizen Kane (1941)
08 Notorious (1946)
09 It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
10 Gilda (1946)
with apologies to other greats
The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1945), Beauty and the Beast (1948), Mildred Pierce (1945), The Lady Eve (1941), Red River (1948), The Bicycle Thief (1949), Pinnochio (1940)
honorable mention
Rope (1948), The Heiress (1949), Spellbound (1945), Now Voyager (1942), Miracle on 34th Street (1947), The Search (1948), Fantasia (1940)
I'll admit I don't love these three quite as much you're supposed to...
His Girl Friday (1940), Rebecca (1940), All the Kings Men (1949)
I've never seen (gulp)
Too many to list. More than in any of these other quickie top tens I'll gladly take your word for it with your top ten lists in the comments. Maybe we'll do a poll to force me into a handful of 40s films as follow up.
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1.- Brief encounter (heartbreaking and poetic, a miracle of a movie)
2.- The little foxes (an scalpel-like study in greed and immoral behavior crown by a wonderful Davis performance)
3.- The third man (Orson Welles and that unforgettable tune, should I say more?)
4.- Black Narcisuss (the color, the sexual tension, the location, the madness)
5.- Rebecca (never get tired of the uneasy atmosphere and the haunting ghost of Manderley)
6.- Laura ( Theres never been a more beautiful and mysterious woman than Laura)
7.- Gilda (...except maybe Rita)
8.- The Heiress (Olivia & Monty, enough said)
9.- Notorious (the most thrilling love story ever with the most passionate lovers)
10.- The shop around the corner (delicious little gem I watch every year Christmas time)
Honorable mentions in no particular order:
Casablanva
Meet me in St. Louis
Cat people
His girl Friday
Leave Her to Heaven
The Philadelphia story
How can you argue with any film that anyone has put on their list? It's the best decade of cinema. You throw a dart and hit a classic. Just to add to the mix:
The Enchanted Cottage
Obsessione
Letter to Three Wives
The Devil & Miss Jones
When Ladies Meet (but really just for the fashions!)
I am just going to list the first 10 that come into my head
Citizen Kane - now that it appears to have gone out of fashion I feel a lot more comfortable naming it
The Maltese Falcon - worth watching for our first glimpse of Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre's gay villain, Mary Astor's middle-aged femme fatale and Bogart
Casablanca - Bogart again and Bergman's got him - almost!
Brief Encounter - too too English but Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard are superb as the not so young couple whose love is never consummated.
The Wicked Lady - Margaret Lockwood is so good at being bad
The Philadelphia Story - Kate Hepburn on top form
It Always Rains on Sunday - Googie Withers joining the working class
My Learned Friend - Black comedy and Will Hay's last film
Kind Hearts and Coronets - Alec Guinness x 8
Double Indemnity - Barbara Stanwyck and that wig in a Billy Wilder classic
to be continued .....
Am I the only person who has basically filled up their Netflix based on these posts? I am loving them from a "whoops, I haven't seen that" perspective as much as a "I love that movie" perspective. My personal major blindspot is the 1920's, so I'm really looking forward to that decade retrospective.
In no particular order, a top dozen:
Casablanca (In my top 3 films of all time)
Brief Encounter
Meet Me in St. Louis
His Girl Friday
The Red Shoes
To Be or Not To Be
La Bele et la Bete
Shadow of a Doubt
Notorious
The Maltese Falcon
Double Indemnity
Easter Parade
With apologies to: Heaven Can Wait, The Philadelphia Story, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, The Bishop's Wife, The Lady Eve, Mildred Pierce, Adam's Rib, The Shop Around the Corner, The Thief of Bagdad, Arsenic and Old Lace, Miracle on 34th Street, The Barkleys of Broadway, and National Velvet
RE: Citizen Kane. I get how technically masterful it is, and how influential it is, but I just don't enjoy it all that much. File it under films I appreciate but don't love.
Way too many stunningly great movies in this decade (you could easily make a top 100 with only 5-star movies from the forties). But these 15 are essential viewing in my opinion. In alphabetical order:
Bambi - best Disney movie ever made, gorgeous to look at and told almost entirely without dialogue (less than 1000 words in this movie!)
Casablanca - The scene where Paul Heinreid plays 'March am Reinn' off with the Marseillaise might be the best 2 minutes in movie history
Citizen Kane - groundbreaking, ambitious and first-rate all the way through (save for that odd song-and-dance number)
Double Indemnity - in an ere dominated by magnificent noir movies, none is better than this.
Dead of Night - not the entire movie, just the ventriloquists’ segment: watch it and be scared out of your wits!
Great Expectations & Oliver Twist - Impossible to mention one without the other. Expectations has the most beautiful first act of any movie I've seen and Twist perhaps the best closing act of all time
His Girl Friday - relentless in it's barrage of great puns
The Maltese Falcon - the stuff that dreams are made off
A Matter of Life and Death - glorious Technicolor aside, this must have hit home really hard emotionally just one year after the slaughter of the Second World War
Meet Me in St-Louis - The best musical of the decade. How do you not weep during 'Have yourself a merry little Christmas'?
Notorious - a masterclass in audience manipulation
Out of the Past - Noir as it should be: uncompromising
The Third Man - filled to the brim with iconic images and blessed with one of the greatest plots Grahame Greene ever wrote
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre - holds up an image to the audience that is not flattering, but boy are you there for the journey!
White Heat - features one of the great performance by an actor: Jimmy Cagney is dynamite as Cody Jarrett
1. The Philadelphia Story
2. Now,Voyager
3. Citizen Kane
4. Fantasia
5. The Red Shoes
6. The Treasure of Sierra Madre
7. The Lost Weekend
8. His Girl Friday
9. The Stranger
10. Notorious
Masterpiece:
Letter From An Unknown Woman (1948)
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Great:
Brief Encounter (1945)
The Third Man (1949)
Casablanca (1943)
The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1945)
Now Voyager (1942)
The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
Meet Me in St Louis (1944)
Double Indemnity (1944)
Black Narcissus (1947)
Citizen Kane (1941)
The Lady Eve (1941)
The Bicycle Thief (1949)
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Good:
The Heiress (1949)
His Girl Friday (1940) (maybe great)
Rebecca (1940)
Gaslight (1944)
Random Harvest (1942)
The Letter (1940)
Adam's Rib (1949)
Out of the Past (1947)
Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
John T -- hopefully you aren't. I know i'm gonna do that with the 1940s
Sullivans Travels isnt just my favorite film from this decade but my all time favorite film in general.The best screenplay hands down!. others from this decade I love are The Heiress,Mildred Pierce,Rebecca,Casablanca,The Lost Weekend( which might have one of the top three performances by a male actor ever)Lara,Leave Her to Heaven,Gaslight, and Detour would be my pick for the most underrated film of the first half of cinema. there is plenty more. overall a VERY strong decade for film.
1. The Third Man (Carol Reed)
2. Casablanca (Michael Curtiz)
3. Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder)
4. His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks)
5. Laura (Otto Preminger)
6. Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur)
7. The Best Years of Our Lives (William Wyler)
8. To Have and Have Not (Howard Hawks)
9. The Search (Fred Zinneman)
10. Louisiana Story (Robert J. Flaherty)
A lot of those are obvious choices, but the '40s are one of my favorite classic movie decades, right next to the auteurist '50s. So many great Hollywood films and the emergence of golden era cinema in places like Italy and Japan (Kurosawa's Stray Dogs is one of several that just missed the top). If you've seen and liked The Third Man (not apparent from your list), I'd recommend seeing Reed's The Fallen Idol, as well. He was one of the truly under-rated directors, with a string of really great films noir at the tail end of the '40s.