James Stewart, John Dall, Farley Granger, Based-on-a-True-Story  •  Based-on-Theatre  •  Crime Drama, Jacques Tourneur  •   Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock  •   No high-suspense mystery here. The fault goes all the way to the bank in Tulsa, but really, knowing who’s to blame for your misfortunes doesn’t put a roof over your head, and The Grapes of Wrath proclaims boldly its belief in people before profit right up to Henry Fonda’s iconic closing speech, a poetic dedication to the need for social justice in a nation caught under the heel of corporate greed. Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Gladys George, Based-on-20th-Century-Literature  •  Crime  •  Detective Film, Howard Hawks Barry Fitzgerald, Howard Duff, Dorothy Hart, Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton, Basil Dearden, Robert Hamer Check out June 1940 Mystery movies and get ratings, reviews, trailers and clips for new and popular movies. But when the Agent is killed, and the man stands accused, he must go on the run to save himself and stop a spy ring which is trying to steal top secret information. Starring: Starring: Ray Milland, Charles Laughton, Maureen O'Sullivan, Stuart Heisler What puts you on the edge of your seat in this film is how you get there. at least, it’s the most definitive Crawford performance of all time.) Everyone, it seems, has something devastating to hide, not the least of whom is Dr. Germain (Pierre Fresnay), a man known for his lusty dalliances, which feels ironic given that he also conducts illegal abortions in the area. The Third Man 1949, 93 min. Stefan, the pianist (Louis Jourdan) is remarkably clueless, and, reading the letter as he’s preparing to leave town to evade a duel, follows Lisa through a series of flashbacks starting when she was 14, progressing through an episode where they’d had a brief tryst, to her marrying someone else and giving birth to Stefan’s child, to him trying to seduce her at a chance encounter without realizing she was the same woman, to their child’s death from typhus, which is threatening to carry her off as she writes the letter. Starring: Starring: A traumatized boy named Matt Garth (Mickey Kuhn as a child; Montgomery Clift as an adult) who survived the attack on the wagons finds Dunson and Groot and joins them; Dunson basically adopts him (along with the cow he’s got with him). Top of the World!” as the bottom falls out from under him. Truthfully, you’ll want to watch it more than once for Howard Hawks’ direction, Sidney Hickox’s dread-inducing cinematography, and Chandler’s barbed exchanges, not to mention the raw chemistry and animal magnetism of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Most of these movies were made on a small budget but can be very entertaining nevertheless. Rope is notable for its extremely long takes and for taking place in real time, making it one of Hitchcock’s more experimental movies. Alfred Hitchcock • Starring: James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Wendell Corey. Van Dyke British … Greed is not good. But who are the spirits truly interested in, and are they truly malevolent? The story is direct and crisply told—what makes this film a must-see classic is that it might be the ultimate in dazzling on-screen chemistry. —Dom Sinacola. Director Henri-Georges Clouzot treats as a given that the world is a crappy place, through and through, detailing how the denizens of a small French town (“anywhere”) are pitted against one another through a series of “poison pen” letters sent by the titular Raven.  •   Erotically supercharged hijinks ensue. By showing its audience the positive side of capitalism in action, the film reminds us of its negative side, too, posturing about Christmas’s true meaning and capturing New York City at the peak of its bustling consumerist culture. Not many films can say they introduced one standard, let alone multiple ones, a la “The Trolley Song” or “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” which was later ranked as the third most-performed Christmas song of all time—you can thank Garland for the initial take on it, and she seems considerably more comfortable in her own skin here than in The Wizard of Oz. We chat his character Jeff Jackson, what it was like to executive produce, what to expect in future movies and get some insight into his career journey. Jump to navigation Jump to search. Weird, beautiful, orgiastic, abstracted, wildly colored and meticulously recorded, the film was a critical darling and considered to be an incredibly bold move on Disney’s part, though many in the classical music community nitpicked Stokowski’s arrangements.  •   The Case of the Howling Dog. Observe the recurring image of the bubbling muck that serves as one of the film’s central locations.  •   So he shows Bailey visions of his life, progressing from his childhood, showing Bailey all the times he made someone’s live better (or outright saved it). It’s difficult to adapt to the new surroundings. Humphrey Bogart, Lizabeth Scott, Morris Carnovsky, W.S. Rear Window 1954, 112 min. Starring: Chandu the Magician (film) Charlie Chan at … This monothematic approach underscores the characters’ shared fascination with this dead (or is she?) The Grapes of Wrath endures for good reason: It’s the truth, an authentic dramatization of how American industry chews up working families and spits them out, leaving them to die in the soil they once tilled, which means that as long as agents of commerce go about the grim business of screwing people out of their livelihood, offering no apology but rather a shrug and an excuse, the film will stay relevant. Akira Kurosawa shoots every scene in the pursuit of making his audience swelter, yanking us into the frame and effectively immersing us in his neorealist depiction of Tokyo. Like Rashomon, Drunken Angel puts male toughness on trial and makes it look ridiculous, but the study of manliness might be a smokescreen for Kurosawa’s veiled jabs at the board of censors installed by the U.S. government in post-World War II Japan. Thriller films; By decade; Pre-1940s; 1940s; 1950s; 1960s; 1970s; 1980s; 1990s; 2000s; 2010s; A list of thriller films released in the 1940s.  •   Gilda represents the oft-discussed male gaze of noir at its most blatant—she’s largely a fetishized object. But at times the framing makes Hayworth’s erotic physicality all the more charged, and dangerous.  •   Cedric Hardwicke, Vincent Price, Cecil Kellaway, Robert Montgomery Nevertheless, the film was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture.  •   (Check out the drugstore scene where Wilson plays checkers with Billy House.) Happily, her no-longer-drunken ex is played by Cary Grant, who is a fabulous foil. One of the great noirs, this early effort from Billy Wilder revealed the filmmaker’s talent for wonderfully thorny, unapologetically rotten characters—and it doubles as one of the definitive mid-century Los Angeles movies. Dreyer’s first film in more than a decade, a tense and measured reaction to the overwhelming forces oppressing him and his country, filtered through the systemic corruption that has both plagued and defined civilization since its Edenic Fall. —A.G. The Top 10 Mystery Movies of the 1940s; The Top 20 Mystery Movies of the 1940s; The Top 50 Mystery Movies of the 1940s; The Top 100 Mystery Movies of the 1940s; The Top 250 Mystery Movies of the 1940s; The Best Horror Movies Of the 1980s; The Best Science Fiction Movies of 1977; The Best Comedy Movies Of the 2000s; The Most Recently Released Movies What ended up happening, though, was a really interesting investigation into how music could be represented visually in the animated medium. —A.G. Treasure of Fear (1945) - Classic Murder Mystery, Full Movie The rewrite was strongly influenced by the War (for example, the setting was moved from Cuba to Martinique to avoid provoking ire from the Roosevelt administration) and beyond the beginning of the book, the film veers off in its own direction—specifically in directions that made it resemble Casablanca since it had been so popular. Go on: be cynical.  •   In one of his darkest roles, 50-year-old Cagney is at his unhinged best, a powder keg of neuroses and sadistic impulses who can feign insanity—as he does in the prison infirmary—for only so long before his delusions overtake him completely. C. Captured in Chinatown. Starring: —Mark Rozeman. We should, however, think not of Welles but of Carol Reed, The Third Man’s bizarrely under-sung director, who fought for Welles’ casting as the shockingly amoral Harry Lime, ensured that the film would be shot on location in Vienna, and fused its aesthetic with expressionist flair, using light and shadows in ways that at the time had yet to be attempted (and which since have yet to be as stunningly replicated). Best B Movies the 1940s by karljhickey14 | created - 27 Dec 2015 | updated - 08 Jan 2019 | Public No Noir , Westerns , or series (except minor series , and series with only two or three films ).Those are the categories or genres with the best B movies , and are generally better known . An American thug in Buenos Aires, our narrator Johnny Farrell (Ford) cheats, and then cheats some more: first at the casino of an older businessman involved in a Nazi cartel, and then with the businessman’s young new wife, his ex, Gilda (Hayworth). Crawford’s performance as the phony voice of the common “hick” is especially captivating—and not only because he so closely resembles a certain nascent president who espouses the same flimsy schtick, openly lying to the people he supposedly represents. 1940s mystery comedy-drama films‎ (2 P) Pages in category "1940s comedy mystery films" The following 46 pages are in this category, out of 46 total. This is a movie—as are many spy movies—that is essentially about trust. “The Great American Novel made one of the few enduring Great American Motion Pictures,” John Springer wrote of The Grapes of Wrath in The Fondas, his chronicle of the Fonda family dynasty. Everyone’s in love with Gene Tierney—even the guy who’s come to investigate her murder. The very fact of its existence (it was filmed in 1945 during the Nazi occupation of France, which of course created significant obstacles for director Marcel Carné ) seems to contribute to its rather magical quality. Tom Neal, Ann Savage, Claudia Drake, Delmer Daves  •   —A.G. Taking up the themes he’d turned over in his two previous films—the now-iconic The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) and Vampyr (1932)—Dreyer brought his soul’s concerns onto an international stage by heading once again into the past, telling of a pastor (Thorkild Roose) and ersatz witch hunter in 1623 who’s spared a woman accused of witchcraft in order to wed her daughter, Anna (Lisbeth Movin). Vittorio de Sica’s vision hits all the notes of the Italian Neorealist style Pioneered by Roberto Rossellini – the story is simple, the characters are relatively simple (some aren’t actors at all; Enzo Staiola, who plays the man’s son and cohort, was plucked off the sidewalk), and there is a focus on the quotidian lives of working class people and the unemployment and poverty that plagued Italy in the postwar years. The first commercial film-animated or live-action-ever to be shown in stereophonic sound. You might have to watch Stray Dog under cover of air conditioning: It’s a hot film, not in the sense of carnality but in the sense of temperature. —A.G. Mysterious, rich in feeling, deliciously creepy, and with jewel-tone supporting performances by Angela Lansbury and Joseph Cotten, it was a great psychological thriller in its day and it remains one now. —Bonnie Stiernberg. my most favourites are 1. the others(2001) 2. insideman( 2006) 3. source code(2011) 4. It was always a fantastic film; a tale of sadistic psychological torture, murder and greed.  •   Some films are artistically groundbreaking and writ-large Important. or Create A New Account ►, Carol Reed Movies. —A.C. There are disastrous miscommunications and something suspicious hidden in the wine cellar and a couple of Hitchcock’s most iconic shots and a hell of a lot of drinking. —A.C.  •   The minute Russell’s Lindy Johnson stalks into the newspaper office run by her ex-husband Walter Burns (Grant), you know it’s to tell him she’s getting remarried and leaving journalism to raise a family, and you know that’s not how it’s going to end.  •   —A.G. It’s savage and sexual, deeply unsettling in its nihilism and yet not utterly without hope; the final shot offers a respite of sorts from Tourneur’s otherwise unblinking sobriety. His first feature, Citizen Kane earned him the ire of the influential media mogul William Randolph Hearst. Charlie Chaplin’s first “talkie” was a biting satire that he wrote, directed, produced, scored, and starred in-as both of the lead roles, a fascist despot who bears a rather marked resemblance to Adolf Hitler and a persecuted Jewish barber.  •   This amazing, dizzyingly paced screwball comedy by Howard Hawks stars Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell, and takes us back into two of the decade’s hallmark preoccupations: The “remarriage comedy” and the intrigue and obsessiveness of the newspaper world.  •   “Don’t go to blaming me—it ain’t my fault,” an employee of the Shawnee Land and Cattle Company tells a group of farmers as he casually evicts them from their own land. Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake, William Bendix, John Cromwell It’s both a classic and a somewhat unconventional Western, and it’s a killer drama. Free Classic Movies from the 1920's,1930's, 1940's and 1950's of the Crime,Detective or Film-Noir Genre all in the Public Domain, edited to reduce video noise. To this day, it doesn’t seem entirely fair that so much credit for Cat People is almost universally given to producer Val Lewton, rather than director Jacques Tourneur or writer DeWitt Bodeen, but it’s true of the entire run of low-budget horror films that Lewton produced at RKO. Mervyn Johns, Roland Culver, Mary Merrall, Anthology Film  •  British Noir  •  Film Noir, Fritz Lang Your preference will come down to how well you like your schmaltz: Those with a taste for unadulterated sentimentality will likely lean more toward Capra, while those who like a healthy sprinkle of cynical realism on their holiday fare will probably go for George Seaton’s Miracle instead.  •   Can a storyteller tell a story that isn’t their own? Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains, Film Noir  •  Mystery  •  Political Thriller, John Huston This postwar psychic landscape is subversive as hell—and suburban too, no longer confined to metro limits. As it turned out, it was Welles’ only significant box office success on release, and remains a canonized film noir. Huston also penned the screenplay, on Howard Hawks’ advice, almost verbatim from Hammett’s hard-boiled novel. The Case of the Stuttering Bishop. When Dr. Anthony Edwardes (Gregory Peck) takes over as director of the hospital where the remote and emotionally null Dr. Constance Petersen (Ingrid Bergman)  works, Petersen quickly realizes something is amiss with Edwardes, and it quickly comes to light that he isn’t Edwardes at all and that he is suffering amnesia. —A.C. His second, a period drama based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1918 novel The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington, was destroyed (in Welles’ view) when he lost control of the editing to RKO. When are you making an honest-to-goodness piece of art, and when are you just playing a sick game of nostalgie de la boue?  •   Still, Cagney is mesmerizing to watch self-destruct. Joan Fontaine stars as a woman haunted by the memory of her husband’s (Laurence Olivier) first wife. (You might even believe, given both the passage of time and enough viewings of The Third Man under your belt, that Welles himself is the architect of the piece, but of course you’d be 100% wrong if you did.)  •   Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Bruce Bennett, René Clair Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles, Howard Hawks and Alfred Hitchcock were doing some of their best work. —A.C.  •   This was the decade of Hepburn and Tracy, Bogart and Bacall, of nostalgia and neo-realism, star-crossed lovers and double-crossing villains. When George sees that his existence has had and continues to have a positive impact on the world, he goes home to his family, Clarence gets his wings and happiness ensues. The oedipal and criminal collide yet again with James Cagney’s psychopathic mama’s boy Arthur “Cody” Jarrett, whose deadly train-robbing exploits ultimately land him in jail. Starring: Regardless, Cat People was a populist hit in its day before being reevaluated decades later as a landmark of ’40s horror.  •   We distilled our list based on a little bit of each of those things, but overall, it’s a suggestion of required viewing material for anyone who aspires to cultural literacy. Wilson releases a repentant former associate of Kindler’s, hoping the man will lead him to the fugitive. Late Spring isn’t about American control of Japanese territories in the 1940s; rather, it’s about a father and daughter going about their business within that world, a film that honors minutiae and celebrates the mundane with superlative grace. You can’t, right? Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb, Crime Thriller  •  Crime  •  Detective Film, Orson Welles Then its reputation began to grow. Right. Eric Portman, Sheila Sim, Dennis Price, Robert Siodmak  •   (Sadomasochism much?) And the agent who’s on call to help them do it is, well, he’s a bit of a temptation. Starring: —A.G. Maybe his words read as the wildest of exaggerations back in 1970, but in 2017 they ring as genuinely as John Ford’s 1940 adaptation of John Steinbeck’s 1939 novel. Betty Grable, Victor Mature, Carole Landis, Robert Clampett What gaslighting is (and isn’t) is defined by this film. An act of genre deconstruction and muted political critique all in one.  •   The choice to play both the tyrant and the oppressed man was an inspired one, underscoring the frightening but inescapable truth that we all contain a little bit of both characters. The Maltese Falcon 1931, 80 min. Starring:  •   A paean to the ungodly power of unrequited love, a gut-wrenching treatise on self-centeredness, and in the deft hands of Max Ophüls, more contemplative and penetrating than melodramatic. Gilda taunts Johnny throughout the film, goading him with her sex appeal, and for his part, Vidor teases us, too—“Gilda, are you decent?” Define decent. Starring: —A.G. Adapted from Maxwell Anderson’s hit Broadway play, the resulting chamber piece swaps the Spanish Civil War for the second World War. Robert Mitchum dominates, whether in his tête-à-têtes with Kirk Douglas or his simmering flirtations with Jane Greer.  •   Ray Milland, Ruth Hussey, Donald Crisp, Based-on-20th-Century-Literature  •  Drama  •  Ghost Film, Henri-Georges Clouzot … Like Double Indemnity, Michael Curtiz’s Mildred Pierce succeeds on the strength of its leading lady; in this case that’s the immortal Joan Crawford, who plays the film’s central character, not to mention all of its heart and soul. Trevor Howard, Alastair Sim, Megs Jenkins, Frank Tuttle So, yeah, of course he’s gotta get blown up, noir-comeuppance style. The desire to personalize this film despite so many interventions were probably fundamental to the development of its nightmare-like tone and the use of reflective surfaces to provide depth and dimension in his constructed set. The earliest mystery films reach back to the silent era.The first detective film is often cited as Sherlock Holmes Baffled, a very short Mutoscope reel created between 1900 and 1903 by Arthur Marvin.It is the earliest-known film to feature the character of detective Sherlock Holmes, albeit in a barely recognisable form.. —A.C. And it’s one of the most enduring ones for a bunch of reasons, including Stewart’s amazing performance and a beautiful script by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett along with Capra. The story’s simple enough: a poor man and his son search postwar Rome for the man’s stolen bicycle, without which he cannot work. In fact, try to blink as little as possible. 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