Best Ever Films of The 40's [Poll: Deadline Sept 24]

[Hayden]

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

BEA is heading somewhere where we've never headed before The 40's. Which is still a decade that by BEA standards, does not exist. Which means that this will be the first chart that BEA makes of the 40's (music and film).

I understand that this might be a difficult list to compile, but I'm looking forward to how it'll turn out. Rules are the same as all the other times, but here's a reminder.

The gist/ rules:

BEA's composes a list of our favourite films of the 40's

Anything with an American release date past January 1st 1940 will be accepted. Documentaries will be allowed, but shorts (<10 min) will not. This is in correspondence to the 60's thread. No films released past December 31st 1949 will be accepted.

All lists will be PMed to me, maxing out at 100. The final list will be 100 films. This time around, I'll be accepting lists of any denotation up to 100. The size of your list determines it's weight.

Lists will also be accepted in IMDb and Letterboxd format. Deadline will be determined later (will more than likely be September 1st or 2nd)

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[Hayden]

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[Hayden]

[badseed]

So I've got back on letterboxd recently and started updating some of my old lists because they really need it. So yeah, here's 200.

https://letterboxd.com/badseedbergman/l...f-the-40s/

[mickilennial]

I'll have a list up as soon as possible. You are all full on in Gowi-land territory for film now.

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[mickilennial]

It’s a Wonderful Life (Dir. Frank Capra, 1946)
Citizen Kane (Dir. Orson Welles, 1941)
Casablanca (Dir. Michael Curtiz, 1942)
Double Indemnity (Dir. Billy Wilder, 1944)
The Philadelphia Story (Dir. George Cukor, 1940)
The Grapes of Wrath (Dir. John Ford, 1940)
The Glass Key (Dir. Stuart Heisler, 1942)
The Maltese Falcon (Dir. John Huston, 1941)
Rope (Dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1948)
The Lady from Shanghai (Dir. Orson Welles, 1947)
The Big Sleep (Dir. Howard Hawks, 1946)
Key Largo (Dir. John Huston, 1948)
Monsieur Verdoux (Dir. Charlie Chaplin, 1947)
The Lost Weekend (Dir. Billy Wilder, 1945)
Shadow of a Doubt (Dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1943)
Call Northside 777 (Dir. Henry Hathaway, 1948)
Laura (Dir. Otto Preminger, 1944)
The Mortal Storm (Dir. Frank Borzage, 1940)
The Magnificent Ambersons (Dir. Orson Welles, 1942)
The Time of their Lives (Dir. Charles Barton, 1946)
This Gun for Hire (Dir. Frank Tuttle, 1942)
Rebecca (Dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1940)

The Third Man (Dir. Carol Reed, 1949)
The Great Dictator (Dir. Charlie Chapin, 1940)
The Stranger (Dir. Orson Welles, 1946)
Obsession (Dir. Luchino Visconti, 1943)
Cat People (Dir. Jacques Tourneur, 1942)
Obsession (Dir. Edward Dmytryk, 1949)
Black Narcissus (Dir. Emeric Pressburger & Powell, 1947)
Dark Passage (Dir. Delmer Daves, 1947)
Potrait of Jennie (Dir. William Dieterle, 1949)
The Heiress (Dir. William Wyler, 1949)
Out of the Past (Dir. Jacques Tourneur, 1947)
Notorious (Dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1946)
Tension (Dir. John Berry, 1949)
Fantasia (Dir. V/A, 1940)
Moonrise (Dir. Frank Borzage, 1948)
Scarlet Street (Dir. Fritz Lang, 1946)
To Have and Have Not (Dir. Howard Hawks, 1944)
White Heat (Dir. Raoul Walsh, 1949)
The Woman in the Window (Dir. Fritz Lang, 1944)
The Spiral Staircase (Dir. Robert Siodmak, 1945)
Ministry of Fear (Dir. Fritz Lang, 1944)
Gilda (Dir. Charles Vidor, 1946)
Gaslight (Dir. George Cukor, 1944)
Northwest Passage (Dir. King Vidor, 1940)
Jane Eyre (Dir. Robert Stevenson, 1943)
The Killers (Dir. Robert Siodmak, 1946)
Odd Man Out (Dir. Carol Reed, 1947)
The Westerner (Dir. William Wyler, 1940)
The Best Years of Our Lives (Dir. William Wyler, 1946)
Hold That Ghost (Dir. Arthur Lubin, 1941)

Late Spring (Dir. Yasujuro Ozu, 1949)
Spellbound (Dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1945)
Stray Dog (Dir. Akira Kurosawa, 1949)
Mildred Pierce (Dir. Michael Curtiz, 1945)
Murderers Among Us (Dir. Wolfgang Staudte, 1946)
The Dark Corner (Dir. Henry Hathaway, 1946)
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Dir. Elia Kazan, 1945)
Kiss of Death (Dir. Henry Hathaway, 1947)
The Razor’s Edge (Dir. Edmund Goulding, 1946)
The Mark of Zorro (Dir. Rouben Mamoulian, 1940)
Lured (Dir. Douglas Sirk, 1947)
And Then There Were None (Dir. Rene Clair, 1945)
A Matter of Life & Death (Dir. Emeric Pressburger & Michael Powel, 1946)
The Clock (Dir. Vincente Minnelli, 1945)
The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (Dir. Preston Sturges, 1944)
Lifeboat (Dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1944)
Adam’s Rib (Dir. George Cukor, 1949)
Fort Apache (Dir. John Ford, 1948)
The Song of Bernadette (Dir. Henry King, 1943)
Crossfire (Dir. Edward Dmytryk, 1947)
Brighton Rock (Dir. John Boulting, 1947)
The Set-Up (Dir. Robert Wise, 1949)
Foreign Correspondent (Dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1940)
The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (Dir. Irving Reis, 1947)
Edge of Darkness (Dir. Lewis Milestone, 1943)
Great Expectations (Dir. David Lean, 1946)
Whirlpool (Dir. Otto Preminger, 1949)
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (Dir. John Huston, 1948)
All Through the Night (Dir. Vincent Sherman, 1941)
Arsenic and Old Lace (Dir. Frank Capra, 1944)
Bicycle Thieves (Dir. Vittorio de Sica, 1948)
Leave Her to Heaven (Dir. John Stahl, 1945)
His Girl Friday (Dir. Howard Hawks, 1940)
Duel in the Sun (Dir. King Vidor, 1946)
The Dark Corner (Dir. Henry Hathaway, 1946)
The Three Musketeers (Dir. George Sidney, 1948)
Sahara (Dir. Zoltan Korda, 1943)
The Picture of Dorian Gray (Dir. Albert Lewin, 1945)
Madame Bovary (Dir. Vincente Minnelli, 1949)
Bambi (Dir. David Hand, 1942)
Red River (Dir. Howard Hawks, 1948)
Mexican Hayride (Dir. Charles Barton, 1948)
Ziegfeld Girl (Dir. Robert Leonard, 1941)
State of the Union (Dir. Frank Capra, 1948)
The Ox-Bow Incident (Dir. William Wellman, 1943)
Dead Men Tell (Dir. Harry Lachman, 1941)
In the Navy (Dir. Arthur Lubin, 1941)
To Be or Not to Be (Dir. Ernst Lubitsch, 1942)

[CA Dreamin]

As always, I will wait to the last second to submit a list. One, I tend to procrastinate. Two, I want to submit the best list I can, so between now and the deadline I will watch and rewatch '40s flicks when I make time to do so.

Ah the '40s, not the strongest decade but one I enjoy aplenty. It isn't the strongest decade because WWII took a heavy creative toll for a few years. With the exception of the U.S., every major film-producing nation during the war curtailed film production, or shut down completely until it was over. And most of the films that were made during the war were feel-good and/or patriotic. Several American directors including Ford, Capra, Huston, and Wyler actually stopped making fiction films and filmed war documentaries. All interesting stuff, but it's no surprise two of the best fiction films during WWII, Casablanca and To Have and Have Not, were directly related to it. I'm sure there are other great war-related films I can't think of right now.

Anyway, as the war was ending and through the end of the decade was when cinema around the globe got interesting. Most countries' films changed their tone, famously the US when film noir took off. And several war-torn countries had to rebuild their film industries from scratch. This all made for a creative upswell around the world. For example, in Italy, we had De Sica making his debut. There was also Kurosawa in Japan, and the Ealing Studios productions in the UK.

This should be a fun list. I'm predicting it will skew towards the latter half of the decade. And yeah, Citizen Kane is amazing.