Films of the 40s
by menayfilms | created - 02 Aug 2021 | updated - 12 Aug 2021 | Public- Instant Watch Options
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1. Rebecca (1940)
Approved | 130 min | Drama, Mystery, Romance
A self-conscious woman juggles adjusting to her new role as an aristocrat's wife and avoiding being intimidated by his first wife's spectral presence.
Director: Alfred Hitchcock | Stars: Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine, George Sanders, Judith Anderson
Votes: 146,836 | Gross: $4.36M
2. The 47 Ronin (1941)
241 min | Drama, History
The legendary Forty-seven ronin plot to avenge the death of their lord, Asano Naganori, by killing Kira Yoshinaka, a shogunate official responsible for Asano being forced to commit seppuku.
Director: Kenji Mizoguchi | Stars: Chôjûrô Kawarasaki, Yoshizaburo Arashi, Utaemon Ichikawa, Kan'emon Nakamura
Votes: 2,675
3. Citizen Kane (1941)
PG | 119 min | Drama, Mystery
Following the death of publishing tycoon Charles Foster Kane, reporters scramble to uncover the meaning of his final utterance: 'Rosebud.'
Director: Orson Welles | Stars: Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Dorothy Comingore, Agnes Moorehead
Votes: 466,163 | Gross: $1.59M
4. Rome, Open City (1945)
Not Rated | 103 min | Drama, Thriller, War
During the Nazi occupation of Rome in 1944, the Resistance leader, Giorgio Manfredi, is chased by the Nazis as he seeks refuge and a way to escape.
Director: Roberto Rossellini | Stars: Anna Magnani, Aldo Fabrizi, Marcello Pagliero, Vito Annichiarico
Votes: 28,992
5. Shoeshine (1946)
Not Rated | 87 min | Drama
Two shoeshine boys in postwar Rome, Italy save up to buy a horse, but their involvement as dupes in a burglary lands them in juvenile prison; the experience take a devastating toll on their friendship.
Director: Vittorio De Sica | Stars: Rinaldo Smordoni, Franco Interlenghi, Annielo Mele, Bruno Ortensi
Votes: 8,117
6. Paisan (1946)
Not Rated | 120 min | Drama, War
American military personnel interact warily with a variety of Italian locals over a year and a half in the push north during the Italian Campaign of WWII as German forces make their retreat.
Director: Roberto Rossellini | Stars: Carmela Sazio, Gar Moore, William Tubbs, Robert Van Loon
Votes: 9,559
7. Rope (1948)
Approved | 80 min | Crime, Drama, Mystery
Two men attempt to prove they committed the perfect crime by hosting a dinner party after strangling their former classmate to death.
Director: Alfred Hitchcock | Stars: James Stewart, John Dall, Farley Granger, Dick Hogan
Votes: 153,756
8. Bicycle Thieves (1948)
Not Rated | 89 min | Drama
In post-war Italy, a working-class man's bicycle is stolen, endangering his efforts to find work. He and his son set out to find it.
Director: Vittorio De Sica | Stars: Lamberto Maggiorani, Enzo Staiola, Lianella Carell, Elena Altieri
Votes: 175,252 | Gross: $0.33M
9. Women of the Night (1948)
75 min | Drama
A mistress of a drug dealer in post-war Japan is shocked when she discovers that he is having an affair with her sister.
Director: Kenji Mizoguchi | Stars: Kinuyo Tanaka, Sanae Takasugi, Tomie Tsunoda, Mitsuo Nagata
Votes: 1,499
10. Drunken Angel (1948)
Not Rated | 102 min | Crime, Drama, Romance
A drunken doctor with a hot temper and a violence-prone gangster with tuberculosis form a quicksilver bond.
Director: Akira Kurosawa | Stars: Takashi Shimura, Toshirô Mifune, Reizaburô Yamamoto, Michiyo Kogure
Votes: 13,367
11. The Maltese Falcon (1941)
Passed | 100 min | Crime, Film-Noir, Mystery
San Francisco private detective Sam Spade takes on a case that involves him with three eccentric criminals, a gorgeous liar and their quest for a priceless statuette, with the stakes rising after his partner is murdered.
Director: John Huston | Stars: Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Gladys George, Peter Lorre
Votes: 166,636 | Gross: $2.11M
12. Casablanca (1942)
PG | 102 min | Drama, Romance, War
A cynical expatriate American cafe owner struggles to decide whether or not to help his former lover and her fugitive husband escape the Nazis in French Morocco.
Director: Michael Curtiz | Stars: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains
Votes: 606,317 | Gross: $1.02M
13. Double Indemnity (1944)
Passed | 107 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
A Los Angeles insurance representative lets an alluring housewife seduce him into a scheme of insurance fraud and murder that arouses the suspicion of his colleague, an insurance investigator.
Director: Billy Wilder | Stars: Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson, Byron Barr
Votes: 167,539 | Gross: $5.72M
14. Beauty and the Beast (1946)
Not Rated | 93 min | Drama, Fantasy, Romance
A beautiful young woman takes her father's place as the prisoner of a mysterious beast, who wishes to marry her.
Directors: Jean Cocteau, René Clément | Stars: Jean Marais, Josette Day, Mila Parély, Nane Germon
Votes: 28,092 | Gross: $0.30M
15. Black Narcissus (1947)
Not Rated | 101 min | Drama
A group of nuns struggle to establish a convent in the Himalayas, while isolation, extreme weather, altitude, and culture clashes all conspire to drive the well-intentioned missionaries mad.
Directors: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger | Stars: Deborah Kerr, David Farrar, Flora Robson, Jenny Laird
Votes: 27,694
16. Hamlet (1948)
Approved | 154 min | Drama
Prince Hamlet struggles over whether or not he should kill his uncle, whom he suspects has murdered his father, the former king.
Director: Laurence Olivier | Stars: Laurence Olivier, Jean Simmons, John Laurie, Esmond Knight
Votes: 18,410 | Gross: $7.09M
17. Macbeth (1948)
Passed | 107 min | Drama, History, War
Macbeth, the Thane of Glamis, receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that one day he will become King of Scotland. Consumed by ambition and spurred to action by his wife, Macbeth murders his king and takes the throne for himself.
Director: Orson Welles | Stars: Orson Welles, Jeanette Nolan, Dan O'Herlihy, Roddy McDowall
Votes: 7,799
18. Late Spring (1949)
Not Rated | 108 min | Drama
Several people try to talk 27-year-old Noriko into marrying, but all she wants is to keep on caring for her widowed father.
Director: Yasujirô Ozu | Stars: Chishû Ryû, Setsuko Hara, Yumeji Tsukioka, Haruko Sugimura
Votes: 19,356
19. Obsession (1943)
TV-14 | 140 min | Crime, Drama, Romance
Gino, a drifter, begins an affair with inn-owner Giovanna, and they plan to get rid of her older husband.
Director: Luchino Visconti | Stars: Clara Calamai, Massimo Girotti, Dhia Cristiani, Elio Marcuzzo
Votes: 8,280
20. The Children Are Watching Us (1943)
Not Rated | 84 min | Drama
Four-year-old Pricò becomes the subject of emotional folly by his capricious parents and negligent relatives.
Director: Vittorio De Sica | Stars: Emilio Cigoli, Luciano De Ambrosis, Isa Pola, Adriano Rimoldi
Votes: 3,054
21. La Terra Trema (1948)
Not Rated | 160 min | Drama
In rural Sicily, the fishermen live at the mercy of the greedy wholesalers. One family risks everything to buy their own boat and operate independently.
Director: Luchino Visconti | Stars: Luchino Visconti, Antonio Pietrangeli, Antonio Arcidiacono, Giuseppe Arcidiacono
Votes: 5,598
22. Bitter Rice (1949)
Not Rated | 108 min | Crime, Drama
Two criminals on the run end up working in a rice field and decide to recruit other workers for their next robbery.
Director: Giuseppe De Santis | Stars: Vittorio Gassman, Doris Dowling, Silvana Mangano, Raf Vallone
Votes: 4,880
23. It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
PG | 130 min | Drama, Family, Fantasy
An angel is sent from Heaven to help a desperately frustrated businessman by showing him what life would have been like if he had never existed.
Director: Frank Capra | Stars: James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore, Thomas Mitchell
Votes: 499,396
24. The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
Passed | 129 min | Drama
An Oklahoma family, driven off their farm by the poverty and hopelessness of the Dust Bowl, joins the westward migration to California, suffering the misfortunes of the homeless in the Great Depression.
Director: John Ford | Stars: Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell, John Carradine, Charley Grapewin
Votes: 100,005 | Gross: $0.06M
25. The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
Approved | 170 min | Drama, Romance, War
Three World War II veterans, two of them traumatized or disabled, return home to the American midwest to discover that they and their families have been irreparably changed.
Director: William Wyler | Stars: Myrna Loy, Dana Andrews, Fredric March, Teresa Wright
Votes: 70,589 | Gross: $23.65M
26. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
Passed | 126 min | Adventure, Drama, Western
Two down-on-their-luck Americans searching for work in 1920s Mexico convince an old prospector to help them mine for gold in the Sierra Madre Mountains.
Director: John Huston | Stars: Humphrey Bogart, Walter Huston, Tim Holt, Bruce Bennett
Votes: 132,475 | Gross: $5.01M
27. The Philadelphia Story (1940)
Not Rated | 112 min | Comedy, Romance
When a rich woman's ex-husband and a tabloid-type reporter turn up just before her planned remarriage, she begins to learn the truth about herself.
Director: George Cukor | Stars: Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, James Stewart, Ruth Hussey
Votes: 73,886
28. Sullivan's Travels (1941)
Passed | 90 min | Adventure, Comedy, Drama
Hollywood director John L. Sullivan sets out to experience life as a homeless person in order to gain relevant life experience for his next movie.
Director: Preston Sturges | Stars: Joel McCrea, Veronica Lake, Robert Warwick, William Demarest
Votes: 28,530
29. Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)
Passed | 126 min | Biography, Drama, Family
The life of the renowned musical composer, playwright, actor, dancer, and singer George M. Cohan.
Director: Michael Curtiz | Stars: James Cagney, Joan Leslie, Walter Huston, Richard Whorf
Votes: 16,868 | Gross: $11.80M
30. The Third Man (1949)
Approved | 93 min | Film-Noir, Mystery, Thriller
Pulp novelist Holly Martins travels to shadowy, postwar Vienna, only to find himself investigating the mysterious death of an old friend, Harry Lime.
Director: Carol Reed | Stars: Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Trevor Howard
Votes: 181,899 | Gross: $0.45M
31. Children of Paradise (1945)
Not Rated | 189 min | Drama, Romance
The theatrical life of a beautiful courtesan in 1830s Paris and the four men who love her.
Director: Marcel Carné | Stars: Arletty, Jean-Louis Barrault, Pierre Brasseur, Pierre Renoir
Votes: 21,174
32. The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)
Not Rated | 88 min | Drama, Romance
The spoiled young heir to the decaying Amberson fortune comes between his widowed mother and the man she has always loved.
Directors: Orson Welles, Fred Fleck, Robert Wise | Stars: Tim Holt, Joseph Cotten, Dolores Costello, Anne Baxter
Votes: 26,768
33. A Matter of Life and Death (1946)
PG | 104 min | Drama, Fantasy, Romance
A British wartime aviator who cheats death must argue for his life before a celestial court, hoping to prolong his fledgling romance with an American girl.
Directors: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger | Stars: David Niven, Kim Hunter, Robert Coote, Kathleen Byron
Votes: 24,923
34. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)
Not Rated | 163 min | Drama, Romance, War
From the Boer War through World War II, a soldier rises through the ranks in the British military.
Directors: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger | Stars: Roger Livesey, Deborah Kerr, Anton Walbrook, James McKechnie
Votes: 16,361
35. Louisiana Story (1948)
Approved | 78 min | Adventure, Drama
The idyllic life of a young Cajun boy and his pet raccoon is disrupted when the tranquility of the bayou is broken by an oil well drilling near his home.
Director: Robert J. Flaherty | Stars: Joseph Boudreaux, Lionel Le Blanc, E. Bienvenu, Frank Hardy
Votes: 2,153
36. Brief Encounter (1945)
Not Rated | 86 min | Drama, Romance
Meeting a stranger in a railway station, a woman is tempted to cheat on her husband.
Director: David Lean | Stars: Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard, Stanley Holloway, Joyce Carey
Votes: 44,263
37. Gorky 1: The Childhood of Maxim Gorky (1938)
98 min | Biography, Drama
A drama reveals the great writer's inauspicious early years as an orphan raised by conniving relatives.
Director: Mark Donskoy | Stars: Aleksei Lyarsky, Varvara Massalitinova, Mikhail Troyanovskiy, Elizaveta Alekseeva
Votes: 779
38. Monsieur Verdoux (1947)
Passed | 124 min | Comedy, Crime, Drama
A suave but cynical man supports his family by marrying and murdering rich women for their money, but the job has some occupational hazards.
Director: Charles Chaplin | Stars: Charles Chaplin, Mady Correll, Allison Roddan, Robert Lewis
Votes: 19,140 | Gross: $0.33M
39. The Ladies of the Bois de Boulogne (1945)
Not Rated | 86 min | Drama, Romance
A society lady engineers a marriage between her lover and a cabaret dancer who is essentially a prostitute.
Director: Robert Bresson | Stars: Paul Bernard, María Casares, Elina Labourdette, Lucienne Bogaert
Votes: 4,840
40. Ivan the Terrible, Part I (1944)
Not Rated | 95 min | Biography, Drama, History
During the early part of his reign, Ivan the Terrible faces betrayal from the aristocracy and even his closest friends as he seeks to unite the Russian people.
Director: Sergei Eisenstein | Stars: Nikolay Cherkasov, Lyudmila Tselikovskaya, Serafima Birman, Mikhail Nazvanov
Votes: 10,868
41. The Red Shoes (1948)
Not Rated | 135 min | Drama, Music, Romance
A young ballet dancer is torn between the man she loves and her pursuit to become a prima ballerina.
Directors: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger | Stars: Anton Walbrook, Marius Goring, Moira Shearer, Robert Helpmann
Votes: 39,185 | Gross: $10.90M
42. The Great Dictator (1940)
G | 125 min | Comedy, Drama, War
Dictator Adenoid Hynkel tries to expand his empire while a poor Jewish barber tries to avoid persecution from Hynkel's regime.
Director: Charles Chaplin | Stars: Charles Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, Jack Oakie, Reginald Gardiner
Votes: 237,469 | Gross: $0.29M
43. The Southerner (1945)
Approved | 92 min | Drama
The life of the poor Tucker family who worked as cotton pluggers and decided to get their own ground, but nature was against them.
Director: Jean Renoir | Stars: Zachary Scott, Betty Field, J. Carrol Naish, Beulah Bondi
Votes: 3,874
44. The Strike (1947)
77 min | Drama
After a strike by underpaid, poorly housed metal workers in a Prague suburb is suppressed by the police, an angry mob attacks the luxurious home of the industrialist.
Director: Karel Steklý | Stars: Marie Vásová, Ladislav Bohác, Oleg Reif, Nadezda Gajerová
Votes: 102
45. Manon (1949)
Not Rated | 100 min | Crime, Drama
A classic tale about bitter relationships between a frivolous girl and a soldier is adapted for the post-World War II time.
Director: Henri-Georges Clouzot | Stars: Serge Reggiani, Michel Auclair, Cécile Aubry, Andrex
Votes: 1,176
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