Several months ago I started a list of my picks for the Greatest Movies ever made. I began with silent films, made my way through the 30’s, then started the 40’s but got sidetracked by, um, laziness.
My apologies.
I’m going to continue with my list of the 20 films that I feel are the best of the 40’s. My picks are deeply personal and will enrage many film school types who will wonder why Citizen Kane is absent. Answer: it’s boring, pretentious and I have no idea what the film is about. Just try watching the movie with an audience of actual normal human beings instead of film geeks.
As you can see, the list is heavy on screwball comedies because anyone who knows anything about film knows that comedy is the hardest genre to master.
There is one foreign film on my list, Day of Wrath, directed by Carl Dreyer, a true masterpiece that never fails to reveal unexpected depths.
There are omissions, films that I love, but hey, this list is not written in stone and next year I can always come up with another list of the Greatest Movies—entirely revised.
All the films are available on DVD to which I link and many, if not all, on Netflix.
1. His Girl Friday, 1940. A comedy of remarriage, a specific genre within the larger screwball genre. Perhaps my favorite movie of all time. Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell make use of brilliant whiplash dialogue to define the battle of the sexes.
2. My Favorite Wife, 1940. Another screwball comedy of remarriage. After seven years as a castaway on a remote island, Irene Dunne returns to her husband, Cary Grant, on the eve of his remarriage. Every man wants to be Clark Gable and tries. But every man also wants to be Cary Grant, but doesn’t even make an attempt. Irene Dunne might be the greatest screwball comedienne ever.
3. Remember the Night, 1940. This film, directed by the under-appreciated Mitchell Leisen is a perfect blend of comedy and drama. Barbara Stanwyck plays a hardened petty thief who is redeemed on Christmas by the honest, sturdy lawyer Fred MacMurray.
4. Waterloo Bridge, 1940. Tragic wartime romance between fallen woman Vivien Leigh and the achingly decent officer Robert Taylor. When Robert Taylor was dying of cancer he repeatedely screened this movie.
5. The Lady Eve, 1941. Barbara Stanwyck as a con artist who makes the mistake of falling in love with her mark, millionaire innocent Henry Fonda. Things get truly insane on perhaps the most horrifying wedding night ever filmed. Preston Sturges wrote, produced and directed this comic masterpiece.
6. How Green Was My Valley, 1941. Set in a Welsh mining town at the turn of the century, this understated and beautiful film tells the story of the Morgan family—mother, father, six brothers and one sister—and a way of life, disintegrating under the forces of modernity. Told in flashback, the adult Huw (pronounced Hugh) looks back fifty years later on his childhood. The voice-over is sad, elegiac, evoking a vanished way of life. My favorite John Ford movie.
7. Ball of Fire, 1941. Once again, Barbara Stanwyck eats up the screen as a bad girl who discovers her good nature by falling in love. This is a retelling of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The weakness in the film is lack of chemistry between Stanwyck and Gary Cooper—Cary Grant would have been perfect in the role—but the film still works.
8. Random Harvest, 1942. Perhaps the most romantic movie I have ever seen. This has it all: war, amnesia, unrequited love. In the starring roles are Ronald Colman and Greer Garson, two of the most gorgeous voices Hollywood has ever produced. There is a plot twist in the second act that will make you gasp. The title refers to the Western front during WWI, “a random harvest of death.”
9. The Major and the Minor, 1942. This is the first movie directed by Billy Wilder. Ginger Rogers plays a “massage therapist” in NY who disguises herself as a teenager in order to get a cheap train fare. Ray Milland shows up, takes the little girl in hand and finds himself strangely attracted to the lollipop licking child. A brilliant comedy in spite of Milland, a second tier leading man. Cary Grant would have been perfect.
10. Day of Wrath, 1943. Denmark, 1623. Witches are being hunted and burned in a small village. A beautiful young woman, the wife of the Parson, is having an affair with her stepson. Soon, love, guilt and witchcraft become intertwined. Some view this dark masterpiece as a veiled attack on the Nazi persecution of the Jews—director Carl Dreyer, a devout Christian, was an outspoken defender of Jews and Judaism—but this film transcends all neat interpretations. The ending is perhaps the most shattering I have ever seen.
Next week, my next five picks for the greatest movies of the 1940’s.
Ray Milland was excellent in “Dial M For Murder.” He was just slippery enough.
<em> . . . boring, pretentious and I have no idea what the film is about. </em>
I’ve long thought the same thing, but just assumed that was due to being an ill educated oaf.
Re My Favorite Wife
Everyone recognizes Enoch Arden in this and other pictures of the period.
Speaking of Enoch Arden reminded me of the Enoch Arden subplot in Elizabth Goudge’s Pilgrim’s Inn, also published as The Herb of Grace. Robert, you might check the public libraries and used bookstores and see if there’s any of her work you want to adapt. If uou liked “achingly decent Robert Taylor,” in WATERLOO BRIDGE, you’ll LOVE the character in The Castle on the Hill, set in England, during the Blitz, who feels he has to give a job to a Jewish refugee from Nazi occupied Austria, because an ancestor of his took part in a pogrom DURING THE REIGN OF RICHARD I!!!!!
Does anyone besides me recognize Tennyson’s poem Enoch Arden in the plot of MY FAVORITE WIFE?
Speaking of Irene Dunne, is I REMEMBER MAMA one of your favorite movies?
Speaking of Donald Crisp, LASSIE COME HOME is a good children’s tearjerker.
Dear Robert: I believe it was George Orwell who, in his review of WATERLOO BRIDGE, was mean enough to point out that Vivian Leigh’s character, abandoned by her lover, didn’t HAVE to turn to prostitution. In a wartime city, there would be plenty of decent jobs around. She could have taken a job as a waitress or a factory worker.
Back when we were first married, I used to call the missus my favorite wife. It always made her nervous…
Thanks to my friend Larry (who apparently has similar taste to you Robert!) I have seen about half of these. After seeing Ball of Fire I had to download Drum Boogie for my mp3 player!
Barbara Stanwyck sizzled and you are right about Gary Cooper.
One of the funniest movies I’ve seen was Adam’s Rib (1949) with Spencer Tracy and Kathryn Hepburn.
It would be timely today and I am sure if it was remade (and done right) would be a big draw.
However my belief is that Hollywood had a gold mine that has been unused – 100s of scripts with brilliant screenplays that were duds – wrong director – no actor chemistry – if someone went through through those and remade them to their potential no telling what they could do!
His Girl Friday – I know it is great but to tell you the truth must of the zingers Cary Grant gives were coming so fast I missed many of them – but I think he does refer to “Archie Leach”?
My fear is that Hollywood is too accustomed to cranking out vulgarity and filth to appreciate old scripts and screenplays, and it would utterly destroy them in an effort to make them “relevant to modern audiences.”
Yes, His Girl Friday can easily be anyone’s favorite movie. Hawks was another director that could do so many genres. Where are the directors as versatile as Hawks or Wilder today?
You could put every Stanwyck movie on the list and I wouldn’t complain. The Lady Eve was on TCM recently and I couldn’t stop watching even though I’ve already seen it a couple dozen times. MacMurray seemed to be the rare leading man that could hold his own with her and Remember the Night is better than Christmas in Connecticut because of him. Fonda seemed too much like Gary Cooper though I guess that was intentional by Strurges. In my opinion Stanwyck was the best actress of her generation and its a shame every mention of the greatest actresses of all time don’t start with her name.
Furthermore re the above:
Raaaandom Harvest, Hilton’s novel is something I’ve read and enjoyed very little. LeRoy’s vision, and these people in front of the camera bring beauty with them. Colman is too old early on, but still good. Garson hits the ball out of the park.
Don Weis said that when he came out of the navy and went to work for MGM, you would walk down the hall and Clark Gable would be coming from one direction, Cary Grant fron another, and later you would run into George Brent. These men were all tall, handsome and poised. Don wondered if these people, or those like them existed today. I’ve been wondering the same thing for years. Probably not, but if they are on the planet, they’re doing something else for a living. It is no longer what it was.
Robert–
My understanding is that Wilder prepared Major And The Minor for Grant, but that didn’t happen for reasons unknown to m. Also on Wilders’ list for Grant, Sabrina and Love In The Afternoon. AS for Kane, and I am a fan of Orson’s, all you say is on the money. My guess, fans of Toland and fanatical anti-americans like this film. Keep these lists coming. The other stuff you write is more important on one level, but forties films are the stuff of life. And Irene Dunne may very well be the most talented female person ever in the movies.