My Best Films of 1930s
by jhmarone | created - 03 Feb 2021 | updated - 03 Feb 2021 | Public- Instant Watch Options
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1. Borderline (1930)
Not Rated | 63 min | Drama
A negro woman having an adulterous affair with a white man causes his wife to go mad and re-enforces the towns-folk's prejudice against Negroes.
Director: Kenneth MacPherson | Stars: Paul Robeson, Eslanda Robeson, Hilda Doolittle, Gavin Arthur
Votes: 574
2. Earth (1930)
Unrated | 75 min | Drama
In the peaceful countryside, Vassily opposes the rich kulaks over the coming of collective farming.
Director: Aleksandr Dovzhenko | Stars: Stepan Shkurat, Semyon Svashenko, Yuliya Solntseva, Yelena Maksimova
Votes: 6,393
3. M (1931)
Passed | 99 min | Crime, Mystery, Thriller
When the police in a German city are unable to catch a child-murderer, other criminals join in the manhunt.
Director: Fritz Lang | Stars: Peter Lorre, Ellen Widmann, Inge Landgut, Otto Wernicke
Votes: 168,249 | Gross: $0.03M
4. Tabu: A Story of the South Seas (1931)
TV-PG | 86 min | Adventure, Drama, Romance
On the South Pacific island of Bora Bora, a young couple's love is threatened when the tribal chief declares the girl a sacred virgin.
Director: F.W. Murnau | Stars: Anne Chevalier, Matahi, Hitu, Bill Bambridge
Votes: 6,374
5. Love Me Tonight (1932)
Passed | 104 min | Comedy, Musical, Romance
A Parisian tailor finds himself posing as a baron in order to collect a sizeable bill from an aristocrat, only to fall in love with an aloof young princess.
Director: Rouben Mamoulian | Stars: Maurice Chevalier, Jeanette MacDonald, Charles Ruggles, Charles Butterworth
Votes: 4,622
6. I Was Born, But... (1932)
Not Rated | 90 min | Comedy, Drama
Two young brothers throw a tantrum when they discover that their father isn't the most important man in his workplace.
Director: Yasujirô Ozu | Stars: Tatsuo Saitô, Tomio Aoki, Mitsuko Yoshikawa, Hideo Sugawara
Votes: 6,199
7. Scarface (1932)
PG | 93 min | Action, Crime, Drama
An ambitious and nearly insane violent gangster climbs the ladder of success in the mob, but his weaknesses prove to be his downfall.
Directors: Howard Hawks, Richard Rosson | Stars: Paul Muni, Ann Dvorak, Karen Morley, Osgood Perkins
Votes: 30,265
8. Trouble in Paradise (1932)
Passed | 83 min | Comedy, Crime, Romance
A gentleman thief and a lady pickpocket join forces to con a beautiful perfume company owner. Romantic entanglements and jealousies confuse the scheme.
Director: Ernst Lubitsch | Stars: Miriam Hopkins, Kay Francis, Herbert Marshall, Charles Ruggles
Votes: 16,138 | Gross: $1.04M
9. King Kong (1933)
Passed | 100 min | Adventure, Horror
A film crew goes to a tropical island for a location shoot, where they capture a colossal ape who takes a shine to their blonde starlet, and bring him back to New York City.
Directors: Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack | Stars: Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong, Bruce Cabot, Frank Reicher
Votes: 90,843 | Gross: $10.00M
10. Pilgrimage (1933)
Passed | 96 min | Drama
A possessive mother pushes her son into World War I service rather than see him get married.
Director: John Ford | Stars: Henrietta Crosman, Heather Angel, Norman Foster, Lucille La Verne
Votes: 828
11. The Invisible Man (1933)
TV-PG | 71 min | Horror, Sci-Fi
A scientist finds a way of becoming invisible, but in doing so, he becomes murderously insane.
Director: James Whale | Stars: Claude Rains, Gloria Stuart, William Harrigan, Henry Travers
Votes: 39,883
12. L'Atalante (1934)
Not Rated | 89 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance
Newly married couple Juliette and a ship captain Jean struggle through marriage as they travel on the L'atalante along with the captain's first mate Le père Jules and a cabin boy.
Director: Jean Vigo | Stars: Dita Parlo, Jean Dasté, Gilles Margaritis, Louis Lefebvre
Votes: 17,452
13. Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
Not Rated | 75 min | Drama, Horror, Sci-Fi
Mary Shelley reveals the main characters of her novel survived: Baron Henry Frankenstein, goaded by an even madder scientist, builds his monster a mate.
Director: James Whale | Stars: Boris Karloff, Elsa Lanchester, Colin Clive, Valerie Hobson
Votes: 53,185 | Gross: $4.36M
14. Happiness (I) (1935)
Not Rated | 95 min | Comedy, Drama
A hapless man undergoes misadventures with avaricious clergy, a tired horse, and a walking granary on his road to collectivized happiness.
Director: Aleksandr Medvedkin | Stars: Pyotr Zinovyev, Yelena Yegorova, Mikhail Gipsi, Viktor Kulakov
Votes: 1,198
15. The 39 Steps (1935)
Approved | 86 min | Crime, Mystery, Thriller
A man in London tries to help a counter-espionage agent, 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 that is trying to steal top-secret information.
Director: Alfred Hitchcock | Stars: Robert Donat, Madeleine Carroll, Lucie Mannheim, Godfrey Tearle
Votes: 61,454
16. The Scoundrel (1935)
Passed | 76 min | Drama, Fantasy
A ruthless, cynical, hated publisher is killed in a plane crash, doomed to be a "restless" spirit for being unloved. A heavenly power gives him a month on Earth to find one person to shed a tear for him before his fate is sealed.
Directors: Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur | Stars: Noël Coward, Julie Haydon, Stanley Ridges, Martha Sleeper
Votes: 443
17. Wife! Be Like a Rose! (1935)
74 min | Drama
When she reaches adulthood, a precocious young woman sets out to find her biological father, who, as her mother tells her, abandoned them for another woman.
Director: Mikio Naruse | Stars: Sachiko Chiba, Yuriko Hanabusa, Toshiko Itô, Setsuko Horikoshi
Votes: 533
18. The Only Son (1936)
Not Rated | 87 min | Drama
A widow sends her only son away to receive a better education. Years later, she visits him, finding him a poor school teacher with a wife and son.
Director: Yasujirô Ozu | Stars: Chôko Iida, Shin'ichi Himori, Masao Hayama, Yoshiko Tsubouchi
Votes: 4,031
19. The Grand Illusion (1937)
Not Rated | 113 min | Drama, War
During WWI, two French soldiers are captured and imprisoned in a German P.O.W. camp. Several escape attempts follow until they are eventually sent to a seemingly inescapable fortress.
Director: Jean Renoir | Stars: Jean Gabin, Dita Parlo, Pierre Fresnay, Erich von Stroheim
Votes: 38,836 | Gross: $0.17M
20. Lost Horizon (1937)
Approved | 132 min | Adventure, Drama, Fantasy
When a revered diplomat's plane is diverted and crashes in the peaks of Tibet, he and the other survivors are guided to an isolated monastery at Shangri-La, where they wrestle with the invitation to stay.
Director: Frank Capra | Stars: Ronald Colman, Jane Wyatt, Edward Everett Horton, John Howard
Votes: 14,432
21. Alexander Nevsky (1938)
Not Rated | 112 min | Action, Biography, Drama
The story of how a great Russian prince led a ragtag army to battle an invading force of Teutonic Knights.
Directors: Sergei Eisenstein, Dmitriy Vasilev | Stars: Nikolay Cherkasov, Nikolai Okhlopkov, Andrei Abrikosov, Dmitriy Orlov
Votes: 12,246
22. The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
PG | 102 min | Action, Adventure, Romance
When Prince John and the Norman Lords begin oppressing the Saxon masses in King Richard's absence in 1190s England, a Saxon lord fights back as the outlaw leader of a resistance movement.
Directors: Michael Curtiz, William Keighley | Stars: Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Basil Rathbone, Claude Rains
Votes: 54,431 | Gross: $3.98M
23. The Rules of the Game (1939)
Not Rated | 110 min | Comedy, Drama
A bourgeois life in France at the onset of World War II, as the rich and their poor servants meet up at a French chateau.
Director: Jean Renoir | Stars: Marcel Dalio, Nora Gregor, Paulette Dubost, Mila Parély
Votes: 31,285
24. The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum (1939)
Not Rated | 148 min | Drama, Romance
The adopted son of a legendary actor, and an aspiring star himself, turns to his infant brother's wet nurse for support and affection - only for her to give up everything for her beloved's glory.
Director: Kenji Mizoguchi | Stars: Shôtarô Hanayagi, Kôkichi Takada, Ryôtarô Kawanami, Kinnosuke Takamatsu
Votes: 4,385
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