The MoFo Top 100 of the Forties: The Countdown

Thanks and great job SilentVamp! (and sorry for your loss)

Here's my list.

01 Citizen Kane (1941) #3 -2
02 Casablanca (1942) #1 +1
03 It's a Wonderful Life (1946) #5 -2
04 The Third Man (1949) #2 +2
05 The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) #31 -26
06 Late Spring (1949) #25 -19
07 The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) #7 0
08 Day of Wrath (1943) #27 -19
09 Children of Paradise (1945) #30 -21
10 The Red Shoes (1948) #38 -28
11 Fantasia (1940) #20 -9
12 Double Indemnity (1944) #6 +6
13 The Killers (1946) #29 -16
14 The Lost Weekend (1945) #24 -10
15 The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) #16 -1
16 His Girl Friday (1940) #14 +2
17 The Set-Up (1949)
18 The Great Dictator (1940) #11 +7
19 Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) #26 -7
20 Shoeshine (1946)
21 The Shop Around the Corner (1940) #19 +2
22 Out of the Past (1947) #32 -10
23 My Darling Clementine (1946) #58 -35
24 The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) #39 -15
25 To Be or Not to Be (1942) #83 -58

• Rome, Open City and Brief Encounter just missed my list
• I had no Hitchcock - my highest rated was Shadow of a Doubt, which was in the mid-30s.
• The Maltese Falcon and Bicycle Thieves were the highest ranked non-Hitch films that failed to appear on my list

I watched The Ox-Bow Incident since its appearance on this list and I thought it was very good. A bleak, taut movie about mob mentality and injustice with no real hero.

The Third Man as high as #2? Right on guys! Sorry have been busy. Here's my list:

1. The Third Man
2. Citizen Kane
3. Casablanca
4. To Be or Not to Be
5. It's a Wonderful Life
6. Day of Wrath
7. Kind Hearts and Coronets
8. My Darling Clementine
9. The Great Dictator
10. Pinocchio
11. Notorious
12. A Matter of Life and Death
13. Bicycle Thieves
14. The Maltese Falcon
15. Drunken Angel
16. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
17. Double Indemnity
18. Late Spring
19. Children of Paradise
20. Fantasia
21. Spring in a Small Town
22. The Philadelphia Story
23. Meshes of the Afternoon
24. Open City
25. The Grapes of Wrath

Pretty basic. Anyway wish I was around more for this countdown, but there's always more. What are we going with next? Has there been discussion?

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"Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

Looks like it will be women directors hosted by Thursday Next. There is a thread in General Discussion.

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Letterboxd

Hm. I see...

I think all of my picks made it except Chaplin's fantastic Monsieur Verdoux. Needless to say, I'm very happy with the end result. Great list, MoFos, and good job, @SilentVamp!

1) Casablanca (1942)
2) Citizen Kane (1941)
3) The Third Man (1949)
4) It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
5) Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948)
6) The Lady from Shanghai (1947)
7) Late Spring (1949)
8) The Lost Weekend (1945)
9) Brief Encounter (1945)
10) Nightmare Alley (1947)
11) Scarlet Street (1945)
12) Pinocchio (1940)
13) Out of the Past (1947)
14) Bicycle Thieves (1948)
15) The Shop Around the Corner (1940)
16) The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
17) Double Indemnity (1944)
18) Notorious (1946)
19) Stray Dog (1949)
20) The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)
21) Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)
22) The Killers (1946)
23) The Naked City (1948)
24) Monsieur Verdoux (1947)
25) Bambi (1942)

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Cobpyth's Movie Log ~ 2019

Monsieur Verdoux GOOD movie!!

Okay, this list is up and ready to be checked off.

Per usual, please let me know ASAP if you see anything amiss.

works great, THANKS @Yoda!!!

By my count Rope was the only movie of the top 26 that wasn't on a previous list, and 66/100 are on another list already.

57 for me this time, which isn't too shabby considering it would have probably been 10 before I got here. one of these years I am going to spend the year knocking off some of these lists...not next year though.

Very cool Yoda, thanks

Just checked at out and I see I need to watch me some of those 1940s movies.

true, but you got me beat; I only had 74% and you had 78%. But I think you missed one: you didn't check off Suspicion.

and the first one you should see is Dorian Grey

My memory is so crappy....I read the synopsis for Suspicion and it didn't ring a bell....and yet I'm pretty sure I've seen it. Oh well, then that means I'm in need of a rewatch I've been wanting to get to Dorian Grey. Actually I want to watch all the films on the 40s list that I haven't seen.

there's quite a few I need to check out -- I feel ya

Here's my list!

1. Brief Encounter (1945)
2. The Third Man (1949)
3. The Shop Around the Corner (1940)
4. Laura (1944)
5. Casablanca (1942)
6. The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
7. The Red Shoes (1948)
8. Notorious (1946)
9. Citizen Kane (1941)
10. Mildred Pierce (1945)
11. 49th Parallel (1941)
12. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
13. Fantasia (1940)
14. It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
15. Rope (1948)
16. The Fallen Idol (1948)
17. Portrait of Jennie (1948)
18. A Matter of Life and Death (1946)
19. Double Indemnity (1944)
20. Out of the Past (1947)
21. Red River (1948)
22. Late Spring (1949)
23. Rebecca (1940)
24. Stray Dog (1949)
25. The Keys of the Kingdom (1944)

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I do not speak english perfectly so expect some mistakes here and there in my messages

Ahahahahahhha! I got my revenge for Great Expectations. It's actully the last film I saw just now! I think it's for the 12th time. It reallly is THAT good. Mind-boggling it's so high,after expectations. Life again played a vicious joke on my acount. It made me leave, I was so disapointed. I would've left anyway for incomparably more serious reasons. I also recommend the novel.

1. Great Expectations
2. Oliver Twist
3. Kind Hearts and Coronets
4. The Third Man
5. Bicycle Thieves
6. The Picture of Dorian Grey
7. Children of Paradise
8. Sergeant York
9. Cat People
10. The Three Musketeers
11. Brief Encounter
12. How Green Was My Valley
13. Samson and Delilah
14. The Great Dictator
15. The Lady From Shangai
16. The Maltese Falcon
17. Key Largo
18. They Live By Night
19. Pride and Prejudice
20. Fiesta
21. Leave Her To Heaven
22. Heaven Can Wait
23. The Best Years of Our Lives
24. The Thief of Bagdad
25. Yankee Doodle Dandee

What the 40s brought I suggest, is plot. Intelligent plot, plot twists, emotional involvement.
The 20s and the late 30s saw brilliant technical and style advances, but plot I think it's fair to say probably was not particularly intruiging or thought provoking. Ironically the biggest exception I can think of that is Limite, which often seems to be recognised for its lack of discernable plot. At least it makes you think!

When I think of movies in the 1940s, I think about how WWII dominated films. Movies weren't always directly about the war but the start of Film Noir was in response to the bleakness of war where one's fate often seemed sealed and unchangeable. Fate, fatalism and irony resulted from the war and gave birth to Film Noir.

Other themes came from the changes WWII brought, like the changing roles of women as they had worked in factories doing traditionally male dominated jobs. In the movies we see men at odds with a more liberated woman. This male-female conflict could be done as a drama but more often it was portrayed in comedy form with the man getting all flustered that his wife or fiance wanted to work. Sometimes the movies theme was of a woman who wouldn't quit her job or give up her career after she was married. Usually the man got his way in these movies and the woman 'realized her mistake' and decided to stay home where the movie said she belonged. That message of women overstepping their boundaries after their new found freedom during the war, was repeated time and time again in movies throughout the 1940s.

Interesting re film noir.

Giving the men a break here, most of them had of course just been fighting in world war two. My impression has always been that this generally modelled the male/female dynamic and feminism largely went back in the draw for a few decades until someone pointed out that men don't fight ware any more, why should we be expected to play the understudy now? Could well be wrong though. I hadn't noticed that in films of the era anyway but have made a mental note of it and will keep an eye out.

Anyway, what I know is that the 40s is stacked with fabulous movies. I reckon I would say that the 40s is the biggest improvement on the previous decade, maybe apart from the 1920s over the 10s.