Best of 1940
by micdub2000 | created - 30 Jul 2018 | updated - 30 Jul 2018 | 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: 146,562 | Gross: $4.36M
2. 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: 99,852 | Gross: $0.06M
3. Ninotchka (1939)
Not Rated | 110 min | Comedy, Romance
A stern Soviet woman sent to Paris to supervise the sale of jewels seized from Russian nobles finds herself attracted to a man who represents everything she is supposed to detest.
Director: Ernst Lubitsch | Stars: Greta Garbo, Melvyn Douglas, Ina Claire, Bela Lugosi
Votes: 22,865 | Gross: $1.19M
4. Foreign Correspondent (1940)
Passed | 120 min | Action, Romance, Thriller
On the eve of World War II, a young American reporter tries to expose enemy agents in London.
Director: Alfred Hitchcock | Stars: Joel McCrea, Laraine Day, Herbert Marshall, George Sanders
Votes: 23,670 | Gross: $3.48M
5. All This, and Heaven Too (1940)
Approved | 141 min | Drama, Romance
A duchess' irrational behavior toward her children's governess triggers tragic events that will change her family's lives forever.
Director: Anatole Litvak | Stars: Bette Davis, Charles Boyer, Jeffrey Lynn, Barbara O'Neil
Votes: 5,382
6. Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940)
Approved | 110 min | Biography, Drama, History
Humble Abraham Lincoln gains the respect of his Illinois neighbors, growing in stature and respect until he is elected President in 1860 and departs for Washington.
Director: John Cromwell | Stars: Raymond Massey, Gene Lockhart, Ruth Gordon, Mary Howard
Votes: 2,052
7. Boom Town (1940)
Passed | 119 min | Drama, Romance, Western
Two buddies who rise from fly-by-night wildcatters to oil tycoons over a ten-year period both love the same woman.
Director: Jack Conway | Stars: Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, Claudette Colbert, Hedy Lamarr
Votes: 3,773 | Gross: $9.17M
8. Our Town (1940)
Not Rated | 90 min | Drama, Family, Romance
Change comes slowly to a small New Hampshire town in the early 20th century.
Director: Sam Wood | Stars: William Holden, Martha Scott, Fay Bainter, Beulah Bondi
Votes: 2,969
9. Northwest Passage (1940)
Passed | 126 min | Adventure, Drama, History
Langdon Towne and Hunk Marriner join Major Rogers' Rangers as they wipe out an Indian village. They set out for Fort Wentworth, but when they arrive they find no soldiers and none of the supplies they expected.
Directors: King Vidor, Jack Conway, W.S. Van Dyke | Stars: Spencer Tracy, Robert Young, Walter Brennan, Ruth Hussey
Votes: 3,896
10. The Mortal Storm (1940)
Passed | 100 min | Drama
The Roth family leads a quiet life in a small village in the German Alps during the early 1930s. When the Nazis come to power, the family is divided and Martin Breitner, a family friend, is caught up in the turmoil.
Director: Frank Borzage | Stars: Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart, Robert Young, Frank Morgan
Votes: 6,028
11. Of Mice and Men (1939)
Passed | 106 min | Adventure, Drama
A mentally disabled giant and his level headed guardian find work at a sadistic cowboy's ranch in depression era America.
Director: Lewis Milestone | Stars: Lon Chaney Jr., Burgess Meredith, Betty Field, Charles Bickford
Votes: 6,837
12. Pinocchio (1940)
G | 88 min | Animation, Adventure, Comedy
A living puppet, with the help of a cricket as his conscience, must prove himself worthy to become a real boy.
Directors: Norman Ferguson, T. Hee, Wilfred Jackson, Jack Kinney, Hamilton Luske, Bill Roberts, Ben Sharpsteen | Stars: Dickie Jones, Christian Rub, Mel Blanc, Don Brodie
Votes: 159,673 | Gross: $84.25M
13. Edison, the Man (1940)
Passed | 107 min | Biography, Drama
82 year old inventor and entrepreneur Thomas Alva Edison is honored in 1929 and he reflects back on his sixty year career of scientific achievement.
Director: Clarence Brown | Stars: Spencer Tracy, Rita Johnson, Lynne Overman, Charles Coburn
Votes: 1,774
14. Knute Rockne All American (1940)
Approved | 98 min | Biography, Drama, Family
The story of legendary Notre Dame football player and coach Knute Rockne.
Directors: Lloyd Bacon, William K. Howard | Stars: Pat O'Brien, Gale Page, Ronald Reagan, Donald Crisp
Votes: 2,154
15. Pride and Prejudice (1940)
Approved | 118 min | Drama, Romance
The arrival of wealthy bachelors in town causes an uproar when families with single daughters aggressively seek engagements, including the Bennet family, with five eligible daughters.
Director: Robert Z. Leonard | Stars: Greer Garson, Laurence Olivier, Mary Boland, Edna May Oliver
Votes: 9,216
16. Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet (1940)
Approved | 103 min | Biography, Drama
True story of the doctor who considered it was not immoral to search for a drug that would cure syphillis.
Director: William Dieterle | Stars: Edward G. Robinson, Ruth Gordon, Otto Kruger, Donald Crisp
Votes: 1,818
17. The Great McGinty (1940)
Passed | 82 min | Comedy
Dan McGinty has great success in his chosen field of crooked politics, but he endangers it all in one crazy moment of honesty.
Director: Preston Sturges | Stars: Brian Donlevy, Muriel Angelus, Akim Tamiroff, Allyn Joslyn
Votes: 4,406
18. Waterloo Bridge (1940)
Passed | 108 min | Drama, Romance, War
Myra and Roy meet and fall in love on Waterloo Bridge during an air raid. Their love will be one of the war's unspoken casualties.
Director: Mervyn LeRoy | Stars: Vivien Leigh, Robert Taylor, Lucile Watson, Virginia Field
Votes: 10,920
19. The Shop Around the Corner (1940)
Not Rated | 99 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance
Two employees at a gift shop can barely stand each other, without realizing that they are falling in love through the post as each other's anonymous pen pal.
Director: Ernst Lubitsch | Stars: Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart, Frank Morgan, Joseph Schildkraut
Votes: 38,410 | Gross: $0.20M
20. Young Tom Edison (1940)
Approved | 86 min | Biography, Drama, Family
Inventor Thomas Edison's boyhood is chronicled and shows him as a lad whose early inventions and scientific experiments usually end up causing disastrous results. As a result, the towns ... See full summary »
Director: Norman Taurog | Stars: Mickey Rooney, Fay Bainter, George Bancroft, Virginia Weidler
Votes: 1,260
21. My Favorite Wife (1940)
Passed | 88 min | Comedy, Romance
Missing for seven years and presumed dead, a woman returns home on the day of her husband's second marriage.
Director: Garson Kanin | Stars: Irene Dunne, Cary Grant, Randolph Scott, Gail Patrick
Votes: 11,501
22. The Howards of Virginia (1940)
Approved | 116 min | Drama, History, War
Just prior to the American War of Independence, aristocratic Virginian Jane Peyton marries unsophisticated rustic farmer and surveyor Matt Howard who takes her to his Shenandoah Valley plantation and later goes to war.
Director: Frank Lloyd | Stars: Cary Grant, Martha Scott, Cedric Hardwicke, Alan Marshal
Votes: 1,263
23. His Girl Friday (1940)
Passed | 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: 63,082 | Gross: $0.30M
24. My Son, My Son! (1940)
Passed | 116 min | Drama, Romance
A self-made success is determined to give his son the lavish upbringing he himself was denied. Not surprisingly, the son grows up to be spoiled rotten, causing grief and pain to everyone who loves him.
Director: Charles Vidor | Stars: Madeleine Carroll, Brian Aherne, Louis Hayward, Laraine Day
Votes: 265
25. Destry Rides Again (1939)
Approved | 95 min | Comedy, Western
Deputy sheriff Destry tames the town of Bottle Neck, including saloon singer Frenchy.
Director: George Marshall | Stars: Marlene Dietrich, James Stewart, Mischa Auer, Charles Winninger
Votes: 12,531 | Gross: $0.35M
26. We Are Not Alone (1939)
Approved | 112 min | Crime, Drama, History
A husband hires a lonely pretty young woman to work as a nanny for his son. His wife becomes instantly jealous and things take turn for the worst. In the background, World War II is in the air, and anti-German sentiment is on the rise.
Director: Edmund Goulding | Stars: Paul Muni, Una O'Connor, Jane Bryan, Flora Robson
Votes: 385
27. The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)
Passed | 116 min | Drama, Romance
In 15th-century France, a gypsy girl is framed for murder by the infatuated Chief Justice, and only the deformed bellringer of Notre Dame Cathedral can save her.
Director: William Dieterle | Stars: Charles Laughton, Maureen O'Hara, Cedric Hardwicke, Thomas Mitchell
Votes: 12,263 | Gross: $3.27M
28. The Westerner (1940)
Passed | 100 min | Drama, Western
Judge Roy Bean, a self-appointed hanging judge in Vinegarroon, Texas, befriends saddle tramp Cole Harden, who opposes Bean's policy against homesteaders.
Director: William Wyler | Stars: Gary Cooper, Walter Brennan, Doris Davenport, Fred Stone
Votes: 6,785
29. The Fighting 69th (1940)
Passed | 90 min | Action, Adventure, Biography
Although loudmouthed braggart Jerry Plunkett alienates his comrades and officers, Father Duffy, the regimental chaplain, has faith that he'll prove himself in the end.
Director: William Keighley | Stars: James Cagney, Pat O'Brien, George Brent, Jeffrey Lynn
Votes: 1,983
30. The Ramparts We Watch (1940)
Not Rated | 99 min | Drama
America learns the value of wartime preparedness in de Rochemont's study of World War I's effect on average citizens.
Director: Louis De Rochemont | Stars: John Adair, John Summers, Julia Kent, Ellen Prescott
Votes: 27
31. The Sea Hawk (1940)
Approved | 127 min | Action, Adventure, History
Geoffrey Thorpe, a buccaneer, is hired by Queen Elizabeth I to nag the Spanish Armada. The Armada is waiting for the attack on England and Thorpe surprises them with attacks on their galleons where he shows his skills on the sword.
Director: Michael Curtiz | Stars: Errol Flynn, Brenda Marshall, Claude Rains, Donald Crisp
Votes: 10,710
32. The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939)
Approved | 106 min | Biography, Drama, History
A depiction of the love/hate relationship between Queen Elizabeth I and Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex.
Director: Michael Curtiz | Stars: Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Donald Crisp
Votes: 6,159
33. Drums Along the Mohawk (1939)
Approved | 104 min | Drama, Romance, War
Newlyweds Gil and Lana Martin try to establish a farm in the Mohawk Valley but are menaced by Indians and Tories as the Revolutionary War begins.
Director: John Ford | Stars: Claudette Colbert, Henry Fonda, Edna May Oliver, Eddie Collins
Votes: 6,783 | Gross: $1.00M
34. The Biscuit Eater (1940)
Passed | 81 min | Drama, Family
Two little boys have faith in a dog they name Promise, so much faith that they enter him in the championship trials for bird dogs. The favorite is Georgia Boy bred and trained by the boys' ... See full summary »
Director: Stuart Heisler | Stars: Billy Lee, Cordell Hickman, Richard Lane, Lester Matthews
Votes: 242
35. They Knew What They Wanted (1940)
Approved | 96 min | Drama, Romance
While courting a young woman by mail, a rich farmer sends a photograph of his foreman instead of his own, which leads to complications when she accepts his marriage proposal.
Director: Garson Kanin | Stars: Carole Lombard, Charles Laughton, William Gargan, Harry Carey
Votes: 493
36. Brigham Young (1940)
Approved | 114 min | Adventure, Biography, Drama
In 1844, after the assassination of Mormon leader Joseph Smith by an angry mob in Illinois, the Mormons choose Brigham Young as their new leader and follow him to a new promised land in Utah.
Director: Henry Hathaway | Stars: Tyrone Power, Linda Darnell, Dean Jagger, Brian Donlevy
Votes: 1,139
37. I Love You Again (1940)
Passed | 99 min | Comedy, Romance
Boring businessman Larry Wilson recovers from amnesia and discovers he's really a con man...and loves his soon-to-be-ex wife.
Director: W.S. Van Dyke | Stars: William Powell, Myrna Loy, Frank McHugh, Edmund Lowe
Votes: 3,797
38. Lillian Russell (1940)
Passed | 127 min | Biography, Drama, History
The life story of the musical star from her discovery in 1890 by bandleader Tony Pastor until her retirement in 1912, when she married newspaperman Alexander Moore.
Director: Irving Cummings | Stars: Alice Faye, Don Ameche, Henry Fonda, Edward Arnold
Votes: 579
39. Susan and God (1940)
Approved | 117 min | Comedy, Drama
Susan Trexel is a wealthy socialite, who while vacationing in Europe undergoes a religious transformation. On her return to America, Susan takes on the task of spreading her new found ... See full summary »
Director: George Cukor | Stars: Joan Crawford, Fredric March, Ruth Hussey, John Carroll
Votes: 1,416 | Gross: $0.82M
40. He Stayed for Breakfast (1940)
Approved | 89 min | Comedy
In Paris, the estranged wife of a wealthy banker hides a fiery communist fugitive in her apartment.
Director: Alexander Hall | Stars: Loretta Young, Melvyn Douglas, Alan Marshal, Eugene Pallette
Votes: 213
41. Primrose Path (1940)
Approved | 93 min | Drama, Mystery, Romance
A young woman from a family of prostitutes falls in love with a hard-working man, but when he finds out the truth about her background, their romance becomes jeopardized.
Director: Gregory La Cava | Stars: Ginger Rogers, Joel McCrea, Marjorie Rambeau, Henry Travers
Votes: 1,786
42. Pastor Hall (1940)
95 min | Drama
This film is based on the story of Pastor Martin Neimuller, who was sent to Dachau concentration camp for criticizing the Nazi party. The small German village of Altdorf in the 1930s has to... See full summary »
Director: Roy Boulting | Stars: Wilfrid Lawson, Nova Pilbeam, Seymour Hicks, Marius Goring
Votes: 157
43. The Earl of Chicago (1940)
Approved | 87 min | Action, Comedy, Crime
Silky has always moved booze. During prohibition, he smuggled it from Canada, but now that it is legal, he produces his own brand. Seven years before, he sent Doc to prison because Doc was ... See full summary »
Directors: Richard Thorpe, Victor Saville | Stars: Robert Montgomery, Edward Arnold, Reginald Owen, Edmund Gwenn
Votes: 408
44. The Light That Failed (1939)
Passed | 99 min | Adventure, Drama, Romance
Dick Heldar, a London artist, is gradually losing his sight. He struggles to complete his masterpiece, the portrait of Bessie Broke, a cockney girl, before his eyesight fails him.
Director: William A. Wellman | Stars: Ronald Colman, Walter Huston, Muriel Angelus, Ida Lupino
Votes: 520
45. The Ghost Breakers (1940)
Passed | 85 min | Comedy
A radio broadcaster, his quaking manservant and an heiress investigate the mystery of a haunted castle in Cuba.
Director: George Marshall | Stars: Bob Hope, Paulette Goddard, Richard Carlson, Paul Lukas
Votes: 4,144
46. They Drive by Night (1940)
Approved | 95 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
When one of two truck-driving brothers loses an arm, they both join a transport company where the other is falsely charged as an accessory in the murder of the owner.
Director: Raoul Walsh | Stars: George Raft, Humphrey Bogart, Ann Sheridan, Ida Lupino
Votes: 8,796
47. City for Conquest (1940)
Passed | 104 min | Drama, Sport
Danny is a content truck driver, but his girl Peggy shows potential as a dancer and hopes he too can show ambition. Danny acquiesces and pursues boxing to please her, but the two begin to spend more time working than time together.
Directors: Anatole Litvak, Jean Negulesco | Stars: James Cagney, Ann Sheridan, Arthur Kennedy, Donald Crisp
Votes: 2,709
48. Third Finger, Left Hand (1940)
Passed | 96 min | Comedy, Romance
A single magazine editor pretends to be married in order to avoid advances from male colleagues, but complications ensue when she meets a potential suitor.
Director: Robert Z. Leonard | Stars: Myrna Loy, Melvyn Douglas, Raymond Walburn, Lee Bowman
Votes: 1,135
49. Strange Cargo (1940)
Passed | 113 min | Adventure, Drama, Romance
Convicts escaping from Devil's Island come under the influence of a strange Christ-like figure (Ian Hunter).
Director: Frank Borzage | Stars: Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, Ian Hunter, Peter Lorre
Votes: 2,969
50. The Great Victor Herbert (1939)
Approved | 91 min | Biography, Music, Musical
A fictionalized version of famous opera composer Victor Herbert where he witnesses the romance, stardom, parenthood, and troubled experiences of his star singers.
Director: Andrew L. Stone | Stars: Allan Jones, Mary Martin, Walter Connolly, Lee Bowman
Votes: 132 | Gross: $0.30M
51. A Dispatch from Reuters (1940)
Approved | 90 min | Biography, Drama
Starting with a small flock of carrier pigeons, nineteenth-century entrepreneur Julius Reuter turns his small company into Europe's most respected news wire service.
Director: William Dieterle | Stars: Edward G. Robinson, Edna Best, Eddie Albert, Albert Bassermann
Votes: 663
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