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| Foreign Correspondent |
I’ve gone on long and loud about how I believe the 1970s were the best decade in movie-making. Recently I wrote a post naming my ten favorite years in films. Six of those years were in the seventies, including the top three. Based on the list it’s easy to surmise that my favorite three-year stretch of films was from 1973-1975. But what about outside of the seventies? Was there a three-year span of motions pictures that approaches what came out is the seventies?
Yes.
The period immediately before U.S. entry into World War II, 1939-1941. I came up with thirty films that I love from those three years including some of my all-time favorites such as His Girl Friday, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, The Grapes of Wrath, Sullivans Travels and Foreign Correspondent. Of the thirty films, John Ford and Alfred Hitchcock directed four and Preston Sturges three, two apiece were by Howard Hawks, Frank Capra and Ernest Lubitsch. Among lead actors Jimmy Stewart led the way appearing in four of the films. Cary Grant was in three, as were Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda. Supporting player Thomas Mitchell was also in three and Ward Bond in four (Bond, Mitchell, William Demarest Pat Flaherty and John Qualen between them showed up in pretty much every movie made between 1932 and 1958, more on them and other frequent supporting players in a future post). So some of Hollywood's great directors and stars were then at their peak. Indeed there were some sparkling performances such as Stewart in MSGTW, Bette Davis in The Letter, Stanwyck in The Lady Eve and Meet John Doe, Fonda and Jane Darwell in Grapes of Wrath, James Cagney in the Roaring Twenties, Mitchell in Stagecoach and Grant in Suspicion.
It was also a revolutionary time for camera positioning, shooting angles and lighting. Stagecoach really set the tone and Welles really ran with it in Citizen Kane. But Capra did some nice work with Meet John Doe as did Hitchcock in Foreign Correspondent and Suspicion and Ford again in Grapes of Wrath. They were directors ahead of there times.
Twelve of the films were comedies, many of the screwball variety. Those three years saw the end of peak screwball era. Even one of Hitchcock's entries (Mr. and Mrs. Smith) was a screwball comedy -- the only one he made. It was also the rebirth of the western with Ford's Stagecoach. There were powerful statement/political films like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Grapes of Wrath, Citizen Kane and Meet John Doe. The coming war and the horrors of Nazism were touched upon in The Long Voyage Home, Foreign Correspondent, and with a light touch in The Great Dictator but none of them were out and out war pictures. Those came in spades during and immediately after the war. There was a hint of film noir from The Maltese Falcon, a genre which would see its heyday following the war. For better or worse The Roaring Twenties is the only gangster picture in the lot.
If it not for Hitler and Tojo perhaps that amazing run would have continued. While Hollywood still churned out some excellent films during the war, many of the best directors were off making propaganda films for the government (and some damn good ones at that). Ford, Capra, John Huston, William Wyler and George Stevens most prominent among them. (The five and their war work are subjects of an excellent book by Mark Harris called Five Came Back which I’m just now reading.) The twenty or so years after the war ended saw nothing to compare what was produced between '39 and '41, at least not out of Hollywood.
That same time period saw a proliferation of great foreign films from the likes of Bergman, Fellini, Antonioni, Kurosawa, Truffaut, Rossellini, De Sica, Kalatozov, Ichikawa, Buñuel and Ray but from the U.S. not so much.
Here are my top ten films from 1939-1941 followed by other great films from those years.
MY TOP TEN FILMS FROM 1939-1941
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) Capra
The Grapes of Wrath (1940) Ford
Foreign Correspondent (1940) Hitchcock
Sullivan’s Travels (1941) Sturges
The Maltese Falcon (1941) Huston
The Long Voyage Home (1940) Ford
OTHER FAVORITES SORTED BY YEAR
Also from 1939: The Roaring Twenties (Walsh), The Great Man Votes (Kanin), Midnight (Leisen), Young Mr. Lincoln (Ford), Ninotchka (Lubitsch), Destry Rides Again (Marshall).
Also from 1940: The Philadelphia Story (Cukor), The Great Dictator (Chaplin), The Great McGinty (Sturges), The Letter (Wyler), Rebecca (Hitchcock), The Shop Around the Corner (Lubitsch).
Also From 1941: Meet John Doe (Capra), Here Comes Mr. Jordan (Hall), Suspicion (Hitchcock), Ball of Fire (Hawks), Mr. and Mrs. Smith (Hitchcock).
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