The Golden Age of Hollywood — The 1940s
by Dibyayan_Chakravorty | created - 31 Aug 2017 | updated - 23 Aug 2018 | PublicWhich of these Golden Age of Hollywood movies of the 1940s from the IMDb Top 1000 list, is the most era-defining in your opinion?
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The 1930s << The Golden Age of Hollywood >> The 1950s
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1. It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
G | 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: 385,806
2. Casablanca (1942)
G | 102 min | Drama, Romance, War
A cynical American expatriate struggles to decide whether or not he should help his former lover and her fugitive husband escape French Morocco.
Director: Michael Curtiz | Stars: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains
Votes: 506,732 | Gross: $1.02M
3. The Great Dictator (1940)
PG | 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: 195,737 | Gross: $0.29M
4. Citizen Kane (1941)
G | 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: 386,666 | Gross: $1.59M
5. Double Indemnity (1944)
G | 107 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
An insurance representative lets himself be talked by a seductive housewife into a murder/insurance fraud scheme that arouses the suspicion of an insurance investigator.
Director: Billy Wilder | Stars: Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson, Byron Barr
Votes: 138,373 | Gross: $5.72M
6. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
PG | 126 min | Adventure, Drama, Western
Two Americans searching for work in 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: 110,637 | Gross: $5.01M
7. Rebecca (1940)
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: 118,371 | Gross: $4.36M
8. The Maltese Falcon (1941)
PG | 100 min | Film-Noir, Mystery
A private detective takes on a case that involves him with three eccentric criminals, a gorgeous liar, and their quest for a priceless statuette.
Director: John Huston | Stars: Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Gladys George, Peter Lorre
Votes: 146,120 | Gross: $2.11M
9. The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
PG | 129 min | Drama, History
A poor Midwest family is forced off their land. They travel 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: 84,275 | Gross: $0.06M
10. The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
170 min | Drama, Romance, War
Three World War II veterans return home to small-town America to discover that they and their families have been irreparably changed.
Director: William Wyler | Stars: Myrna Loy, Dana Andrews, Fredric March, Teresa Wright
Votes: 55,991 | Gross: $23.65M
11. Laura (1944)
PG | 88 min | Drama, Film-Noir, Mystery
A police detective falls in love with the woman whose murder he is investigating.
Director: Otto Preminger | Stars: Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb, Vincent Price
Votes: 41,340 | Gross: $4.36M
12. Out of the Past (1947)
PG | 97 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
A private eye escapes his past to run a gas station in a small town, but his past catches up with him. Now he must return to the big city world of danger, corruption, double crosses and duplicitous dames.
Director: Jacques Tourneur | Stars: Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, Kirk Douglas, Rhonda Fleming
Votes: 31,489
13. The Philadelphia Story (1940)
PG | 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: 61,706
14. Rope (1948)
AA | 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: 124,785
15. Notorious (1946)
102 min | Drama, Film-Noir, Romance
A woman is asked to spy on a group of Nazi friends in South America. How far will she have to go to ingratiate herself with them?
Director: Alfred Hitchcock | Stars: Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains, Louis Calhern
Votes: 89,812 | Gross: $10.46M
16. His Girl Friday (1940)
PG | 92 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance
A newspaper editor uses every trick in the book to keep his ace reporter ex-wife from remarrying.
Director: Howard Hawks | Stars: Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Bellamy, Gene Lockhart
Votes: 51,849 | Gross: $0.30M
17. The Big Sleep (1946)
14A | 114 min | Crime, Film-Noir, Mystery
Private detective Philip Marlowe's hired by a rich family. Before the complex case is over, he's seen murder, blackmail, and what might be love.
Director: Howard Hawks | Stars: Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, John Ridgely, Martha Vickers
Votes: 77,175 | Gross: $6.54M
18. Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)
PG | 118 min | Comedy, Crime, Thriller
A drama critic learns on his wedding day that his beloved maiden aunts are homicidal maniacs, and that insanity runs in his family.
Director: Frank Capra | Stars: Cary Grant, Priscilla Lane, Raymond Massey, Jack Carson
Votes: 63,858
19. Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
PG | 108 min | Thriller
A young woman discovers her visiting uncle may not be the man he seems to be.
Director: Alfred Hitchcock | Stars: Teresa Wright, Joseph Cotten, Macdonald Carey, Henry Travers
Votes: 57,576
20. To Have and Have Not (1944)
PG | 100 min | Adventure, Comedy, Film-Noir
During World War II, American expatriate Harry Morgan helps transport a French Resistance leader and his beautiful wife to Martinique while romancing a sensuous lounge singer.
Director: Howard Hawks | Stars: Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Walter Brennan, Dolores Moran
Votes: 30,041
21. The Lost Weekend (1945)
PG | 101 min | Drama, Film-Noir
The desperate life of a chronic alcoholic is followed through a four-day drinking bout.
Director: Billy Wilder | Stars: Ray Milland, Jane Wyman, Phillip Terry, Howard Da Silva
Votes: 32,574 | Gross: $9.46M
22. Key Largo (1948)
100 min | Action, Crime, Drama
A man visits his war buddy's family hotel and finds a gangster running things. As a hurricane approaches, the two end up confronting each other.
Director: John Huston | Stars: Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, Lauren Bacall, Lionel Barrymore
Votes: 36,088
23. Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
G | 96 min | Comedy, Drama, Family
When a nice old man who claims to be Santa Claus is institutionalized as insane, a young lawyer decides to defend him by arguing in court that he is the real thing.
Director: George Seaton | Stars: Edmund Gwenn, Maureen O'Hara, John Payne, Gene Lockhart
Votes: 38,925 | Gross: $2.65M
24. Fantasia (1940)
G | 125 min | Animation, Family, Fantasy
A collection of animated interpretations of great works of Western classical music.
Directors: James Algar, Samuel Armstrong, Ford Beebe Jr., Norman Ferguson, David Hand, Jim Handley, T. Hee, Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske, Bill Roberts, Paul Satterfield, Ben Sharpsteen | Stars: Leopold Stokowski, Deems Taylor, The Philadelphia Orchestra, Corey Burton
Votes: 86,323 | Gross: $76.41M
25. Spellbound (1945)
PG | 111 min | Film-Noir, Mystery, Romance
A psychiatrist protects the identity of an amnesia patient accused of murder while attempting to recover his memory.
Director: Alfred Hitchcock | Stars: Ingrid Bergman, Gregory Peck, Michael Chekhov, Leo G. Carroll
Votes: 42,011 | Gross: $7.00M
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