Best has to be “Children of Paradise”
Most underrated “I Walked with a Zombie”
Casablanca
Late Spring (loveliest Ozu)
Letter from an Unknown Woman (exquisite romantic confection)
Citizen Kane
Children of Paradise
To Be or Not to Be (genius)
Spring in a Small Town (beautiful Chinese classic fairly voted the country’s best)
The Big Sleep
Kind Hearts and Coronets (the most elegant of comedies)
The Thief of Bagdad (what a grand colourful escapist adventure this is)
The Red Shoes (yet another goodie from Britain’s golden age)
The Maltese Falcon
Ivan the Terrible
The Third Man
Dumbo (anyone who doesn’t shed a tear when he swings from his mum’s trunk through the bars of her cage must be hard-hearted indeed)
The Lady Eve
the 40s wasn’t Mizoguchi’s best decade, but The Loyal 47 Ronin is an extraordinary, if quite testing, epic.
MR SKEFINGTON, THE DEVIL AND DANIEL WEBSTER, THE RED SHOES, THE THIRD MAN,
I second “SHADOW OF A DOUBT” – what a great film.
I’ve never considered the 1940’s to be as good a decade as those to follow. According to Criticker “Citizen Kane” is generally my highest ranked film from the decade, although to tell you the truth I almost equally prefer the Bugs Bunny short “Little Red Riding Rabbit”, but only because that one was just exceptional.
>>I’ve never considered the 1940’s to be as good a decade as those to follow.<<
It was luminous compared to the banal, cookie-cutter 1950s. Movies didn’t begin to be interesting again until at least the mid-1960s (well, English language movies, anyway).
And considering its many citings here, I appear to be in the minority considering CASABLANCA to be junk. Existential junk, to be sure, but still junk. Pure soap opera.
Josh
Having not seen many movies from the 40s, I’m going to have to go with The Third Man and Citizen Kane. :)