JamesG
11-20-2009, 11:31 AM
Some theorize that the greatest art is born out of uncertainty and hardship.
If that's the case, the 1930s certainly measure up. The Great Depression and World War II were austere bookends to a tumultuous decade, and the types of films released three-quarters of a century ago reflect that.
Musical escapism (Swing Time, 42nd Street) and screwball comedies (Bringing Up Baby, My Man Godfrey, The Awful Truth) jollied theatergoers out of their torpor during the darkest days of '30s.
For adrenaline junkies who counted thrills and chills as a boost, Universal Studios began its classic series of horror films (Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula and The Invisible Man).
Finally, during the last year of the decade, nine seminal movies, including Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz unspooled before audiences suffused with nostalgia about a world that was soon to change forever.
40. 42nd Street (1933)
The ultimate backstage musical sees an ailing Broadway impresario (Warner Baxter) trying to put on what could be his last show. But when his star twists her ankle, what's a producer to do? Enter tap-happy Ruby Keeler -- serendipitously -- from stage left.
The Harry Warren/Al Dubin score contains such standards as the title tune, 'You're Getting to Be a Habit With Me' and 'Shuffle Off to Buffalo.'
And although the plot creaks with corniness, the melodies (even 75 years later) remain evergreen inspiring as they did a real hit Broadway musical version of the film in the 1980s.
39. The Blue Angel (1930)
Marlene Dietrich vamps it up and croons her signature song ('Falling in Love Again') as Lola Lola, a cabaret performer who mesmerizes a respected teacher (Emil Jannings) into throwing his life away for her.
Directed by Josef von Sternberg, the film had a tough time with censors in the U.S. (it was banned in soon-to-be Nazi Germany) cementing as it did Dietrich's status as one of sound film's first bona fide vixens.
38. You Can't Take It with You (1938)
Despite winning Best Picture and Director (Frank Capra) Oscars, this adaptation of the George S. Kaufman/Moss Hart Broadway comedy hasn't traveled well through the decades.
The zaniness of the eccentric Sycamore clan headed by Grandpa Vanderhof (Lionel Barrymore) seems a bit forced and less endearing with the passage of time, especially vis-à-vis Capra's more classic '30s efforts (see Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and It Happened One Night).
Still, even this "Capra-corn" is buoyed by a bright cast that includes James Stewart, Jean Arthur, Edward Arnold and a very young, pirouetting Ann Miller.
37. I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932)
Paul Muni plays a decorated World War I veteran who is wrongly convicted and forced to labor on a Southern chain gang before he can make his escape to Chicago. Trouble is; he can't outrun his past.
The movie caused many viewers to question the U.S. penal system and led to some reforms.
And the film's final scene, with a broken Muni backing furtively away into the darkness while telling how he survives ("I steal") is as chilling to view now as it was more than 70 years ago.
36. Captain Blood (1935)
Errol Flynn as a wronged Irish doctor (Peter Blood) is deported to the Caribbean but escapes and becomes a privateer in this quintessential swashbuckler that was also the actor's breakout role into major stardom.
Olivia De Havilland is radiant as Flynn's object of affection and Basil Rathbone strikes just the right duplicitous pose as Flynn's onetime partner in crime who becomes his sworn enemy.
Flynn's and Rathbone's swordplay (both men were accomplished fencers) is the film's highpoint.
35. Little Women (1933)
Director (actresses a specialty) George Cukor helmed this adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's classic Civil War-era novel of the tight-knit March sisters coming of age under the gentle tutelage of their mother Marmee (Spring Byington).
Katharine Hepburn is fine -- a case of typecasting, really -- as independent-minded Jo, with Joan Bennett as Amy and Edna May Oliver wonderfully brittle as Aunt March.
Remade a few times and with a decided feminist slant in 1994.
34. Les Miserables (1935)
Long before the hit Broadway musical, there was this definitive film version of Victor Hugo's immortal novel about one man's obsession and justice miscarried to an illogical extreme.
After serving a decade in prison for swiping a loaf of bread, Jean Valjean (Frederic March) breaks his parole and is relentlessly pursued -- for another 10 years -- by Inspector Javert (Charles Laughton) who enthusiastically subscribes to the "two strikes and you're out" brand of justice.
33. My Man Godfrey (1936)
During the height of the Depression, a dizzy New York socialite (Carole Lombard) hires a vagrant named Godfrey (William Powell), whom she meets at the city dump, to be the family butler.
Lombard and Powell -- both screwball comedy veterans -- are hysterical in a movie that takes the idle rich to task (Godfrey refuses to romance his beguiled employer, feeling that such a relationship isn't appropriate and might imperil their employer-employee compact).
The film, directed by Gregory La Cava, was nominated for Oscars in all major categories (except Best Picture) but didn't win a single statuette.
32. Dodsworth (1936)
When his frivolous wife Fran (Ruth Chatterton) refuses to act her age and begins an affair during a trip to Europe, retired automobile industry executive Sam Dodsworth (Walter Huston) begins to despair -- until he meets a woman (Mary Astor) who embodies all the steadfast traits his wife lacks.
The film, directed by William Wyler from Sinclair Lewis's novel, is a small masterpiece of the deep price marital strife exacts, particularly when a "second chance" presents itself.
31. The Awful Truth (1937)
Cary Grant and Irene Dunne are New York City high society types, married and suspicious of each other's fidelity.
No sooner do they start divorce proceedings (they split custody of their dog!) than they begin to undermine each other's early stabs at dating -- proving that you can't have it both ways, at least in vintage screwball comedies.
Directed with considerable elan by Leo McCarey, who won an Oscar.
30. Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)
Charles Laughton commands the screen in perhaps his best role, as Quasimodo the disfigured bell-ringer of Notre Dame Cathedral and literature's original 'Elephant Man.'
In heroic fashion he risks all to save the woman of his dreams, gypsy girl Esmeralda (Maureen O'Hara), from the evil clutches of the Parisian constabulary.
This adaptation of Victor Hugo's timeless novel takes liberties with the original ending (Esmeralda and Quasimodo die in the book), but, nonetheless, is the default version that most other film versions have copied.
29. Ninotchka (1939)
The famed Ernst Lubitsch directorial "touch" is on full display in Greta Garbo's penultimate film before she permanently retired from the screen and became almost as famous a recluse as she had been an actress.
Garbo plays the title character, an apparatchik who is sent to Paris to retrieve three wayward Russian envoys who've become seduced by the West and gone AWOL.
It isn't long before Ninotchka herself falls prey to the beauty of the City of Light as shown to her by a charming expatriate Count (Melvyn Douglas).
The film, which was among the first to criticize (satirize, really) the Soviet system, later became a popular stage and then film musical starring Fred Astaire in the Douglas role with Cyd Charisse as a dancing Ninotchka.
28. The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
Lightning struck twice when the cast of Captain Blood reunited three years later to invigorate this folkloric tale of everyone's favorite wealth-redistributing Anglo-Saxon and his band of merry men.
Errol Flynn is, hands down, the most photogenic bandit Sherwood Forest ever concealed, with Olivia De Havilland fetching as Maid Marian.
Throw in Basil Rathbone -- hissable as Robin's archenemy Sir Guy of Gisbourne -- and Erich Wolfgang Korngold's Oscar-winning score, and you have rollicking fun that even Little John couldn't shake a stick at.
27. The Lady Vanishes (1938)
Travelers on a trans-European train are perplexed when an elderly governess (Dame May Whitty) seemingly vanishes into thin air.
Michael Redgrave, Margaret Lockwood and Paul Lukas co-star in one of Alfred Hitchcock's better earlier efforts.
And well that is was; Hollywood-bound Hitch needed a big hit to establish his credibility Stateside, as his previous three films -- all made in Britain -- were consecutive flops.
26. Stagecoach (1939)
Although Thomas Mitchell walked off with the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his portrayal of a boozy doctor, director John Ford turned John Wayne (as "The Ringo Kid") into a household name and archetypal Western hero in this, the Duke's breakout role.
Claire Trevor, Andy Devine and John Carradine are other stagecoach passengers trying to make it to safety during an Apache uprising, and they'll fare better with gunslinger Ringo on board.
Duke and Pappy would go on to make a series of seminal Westerns together but at a price: Their co-dependent relationship, an alternating hot-and-cold friendship that lasted for decades, could flummox the most probing psychoanalyst.
25. The Invisible Man (1933)
This adaptation (forget all others) of H.G. Wells' classic novel about a mad scientist run amok under the cloak of invisibility ranks as an all-time great in the annals of film horror.
Claude Rains is deliciously malevolent as Dr. Jack Griffin (or at least his disembodied voice is, since Rains is bandaged through most of the film).
Comely Gloria Stuart (the elderly Rose from Titanic) co-stars in a movie brilliantly directed by Universal Studios' horror maestro, James Whale.
24. The Four Feathers (1939)
Honor's at stake when a British army officer (John Clements) who's just resigned his commission is branded a coward -- given a white feather -- by his three friends and fellow officers on the eve of a military campaign into the Sudan.
Ralph Richardson co-stars (as one of the chiding officers) in a movie where courage triumphs, evil is vanquished and everyone keeps a stiff upper lip.
Produced by Alexander Korda and directed by his brother Zoltan.
23. Stage Door (1937)
Rich society girl Terry Randall (Katharine Hepburn) goes incognito and tries to make it on Broadway without dropping names or finessing family connections.
Gregory La Cava directs and Ginger Rogers co-stars along with Eve Arden and Lucille Ball in this adaptation of the George Kaufman/Edna Ferber hit of young theater hopefuls sharing their ups and downs in a cramped boarding house.
This one contains the classic line (for Hepburn impersonators, especially): "The calla lilies are in bloom ..."
22. Dracula (1931)
Bela Lugosi, um, cut his teeth on this role as Transylvania's most famous nightcrawler, and in so doing spawned what has become (especially recently) a cottage industry of movies and TV shows devoted to all things that suck ... blood.
But the definitive version of Bram Stoker's vampire tale continues to be this film, with Lugosi fangtastic as the Count.
Factoid: a Spanish-language version of the movie was filmed simultaneously on the same sets (at night but sans Bela), and some horror aficionados consider it to be superior.
21. All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
The first (and perhaps best) anti-war film ever made, has Lew Ayres and his school buddies enlisting (after prodding from their jingoistic teacher) to fight for the Kaiser in World War I. It isn't long before utter disillusionment begins to set in.
The futility and absurd contradiction of battle is encapsulated in a scene when Ayres' character mortally wounds a French soldier and then tries desperately to save his life in a bombed-out crater in No-Man's Land.
Adapted from the novel by Erich Maria Remarque, the film won Oscars for Best Picture and Director (Lewis Milestone).
20. Swing Time (1936)
With its wonderful mix of tap numbers and ballroom routines, all set to a shimmering score by Jerome Kern, and a couple of first-rate comical second bananas (Victor Moore and Helen Broderick), Swing Time is probably the best-realized movie in the entire Fred & Ginger canon.
Astaire and Rogers have never been more engaging and insouciant than in 'Pick Yourself Up' or lighter than air than in the lilting 'Waltz in Swing Time'.
And Fred's 'Bojangles of Harlem' number, where he hoofs with three silhouetted shadows of himself (preceded by an inventive "line dance" with some leggy chorines), was light-years ahead of its time cinematically.
19. Modern Times (1936)
In his last silent comedy (albeit with sound effects), Charlie Chaplin rages against the machine as a human cog in a giant, soulless assembly line that evokes themes from Fritz Lang's Metropolis.
The movie comments on the desperate lengths people had to go to survive during the Depression, often sacrificing individuality and even identity in favor of modern economies of scale.
Paulette Goddard, Chaplin's wife at the time, appears as an orphan girl on the run from police.
A man of many talents, writer/director Chaplin also composed the score which includes 'Smile,' a tune famously covered by Nat King Cole, among others.
18. King Kong (1933)
We all know the big lug is putty in Fay Wray's miniscule hands, and that he falls (both figuratively and literally) in a big way for the blonde bombshell's elfin charms.
Kong's cinematic debut in 1933 was a groundbreaking event. Although the clunky stop-motion animation of the big ape swatting planes atop a Manhattan skyscraper may seem archaic now, it held movie audiences spellbound 76 years ago, making it truly the progenitor of all outsized monster movies to come.
17. The Thin Man (1934)
Urbane William Powell as Nick Charles meets his distaff match in Nora (Myrna Loy). They're a married couple (retired detective and heiress, respectively) who solve crimes as effortlessly as they mix martinis.
About the only thing out of Nick and Nora's comfort zone is their precocious, unpredictable yet beloved wire-haired fox terrier, Asta.
Based on the mystery novel by Dashiell Hammett, The Thin Man was the first of six installments starring Powell and Loy as filmdom's wittiest crime-solvers.
Factoid: The 'Thin Man' of the title is not Nick Charles but the name of the prime suspect in the film.
16. Grand Hotel (1932)
More star power is on display than in the heavens in MGM's ambitious mounting of a film (one of the first) that weaves together various stories and characters into a rich narrative tapestry.
Greta Garbo, John and Lionel Barrymore, Wallace Beery, Joan Crawford and Lewis Stone star as denizens of Berlin's luxurious Grand Hotel.
The film, which was adapted from a play based on a book, became, years later, a hit musical on Broadway.
Quotable Quotes: This is the one where Garbo emotes, "I want to be alone."
15. Frankenstein (1931)
Universal Studios ushered in the Golden Age of horror with this brilliantly directed (by James Whale) adaptation of the immortal Mary Shelley tale of science gone terribly awry.
Lurching through the role of a lifetime, Boris Karloff became indelibly associated with the misunderstood monster.
As such, he delivered a touching performance filled with pathos that was at the opposite end of the spectrum from Jack Pierce's chilling makeup; a visage that would set the iconic mold for all future pretenders to the Frankenstein's monster throne. Which just leaves us to say: "It's Alive!"
14. Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)
A vast ye maties!
A huge hit in its day (and winner of the Best Picture Oscar), Bounty chronicles the real-life mutiny led by Fletcher Christian (Clark Gable) against the puritanical Captain Bligh (Charles Laughton in full ogre mode). Neither of its two remakes -- with Marlon Brando, then Mel Gibson in the Christian role -- approached the critical and popular success of this version.
The film (which Gable considered his favorite) was just another in a series of stepping-stones that resulted in the actor being crowned the king of Hollywood.
13. M (1931)
German Director Fritz Lang's first sound film is a knockout, with Peter Lorre absolutely chilling as Hans Beckert, a serial killer and pedophile who preys on children in 1930s Berlin, all the while whistling 'In the Hall of the Mountain King' from Grieg's 'Peer Gynt.'
Although the polizei are on the case, it isn't long before the underworld decides to root out the killer themselves (his murders and the attendant publicity are bad for business).
Lang's avowed favorite among all the films he directed, M marked Lorre's first starring role and was a big reason he was typecast as a villain for years afterward.
12. Bringing Up Baby (1938)
Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn are a top-notch screwball duo in this comedy trifle directed by Howard Hawks about a nerdy paleontologist (Grant) who is wooed by a crackpot socialite (Hepburn) while both try to corral an escaped pet leopard (the titular "Baby") who's loose in the wilds of Connecticut.
Grant and Hepburn would pair up two more times in the next couple of years in equally beguiling comedies (Holiday and The Philadelphia Story), proving that their comic chemistry was deft indeed.
11. Wuthering Heights (1939)
Emily Bronte's first (and only) novel, with its overarching themes of thwarted love and class division in Victorian England, makes it to the screen mostly intact.
Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier as ill-fated lovers Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff still make schoolgirls' hearts flutter at "what might have been," and Gregg Toland's fog-shrouded cinematography (which won an Oscar) works wonders in setting the appropriate moody scene.
William Wyler directs from an angsty screenplay by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur; on sabbatical from their usual rapid-fire comedy milieu.
10. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
Disney's musicalized version of the Grimm Brothers' fairy tale is a heady mixture of goofus comedy (the dwarfs' incessant bumbling), suspense (the evil queen's machinations), romance (the prince and Snow White's cuddly moments together) and tunes ('Whistle While You Work,' 'Some Day My Prince Will Come,' 'Heigh-Ho').
In the long and storied history of Disney, few films had more naysayers that had to gulp their words than this one.
Recognizing the movie's instant significance and growing worldwide acclaim, AMPAS gave Walt an honorary Oscar in 1939.
Factoid: MGM dancer Marge Champion was the real-life model for Snow White and spent grueling hours posing for Disney animators.
9. Of Mice and Men (1939)
John Steinbeck's greatest novel is brilliantly adapted to the screen with Burgess Meredith and Lon Chaney Jr. in the leads as George and Lennie, two California migrant ranch hands (the brains and the brawn, respectively) trying to stay alive during the Depression while avoiding a bullying foreman who has it in for Lennie.
Chaney particularly registers as the mentally retarded gentle giant who just wants to raise rabbits; a portrayal a world away from his better known Wolf Man and Mummy roles. "Dean of American composers" Aaron Copland provides the evocative score.
8. Duck Soup (1933)
It's the Paramount-era Marx Brothers at their craziest before they hiked it across town to MGM and came under the ameliorating influence of studio wunderkind Irving Thalberg.
Groucho's "Rufus T. Firefly," prime minister of fictional Freedonia, in this inspired insanity that was "discovered" in the '70s by college kids who interpreted all the antic mayhem as a premeditated antiwar satire. (Groucho declares war on neighboring Sylvania for a perceived slight. Think Iraq with a laugh track.)
Includes the classic "mirror sequence" and Margaret Dumont in strict perseverance mode as Groucho's long-suffering straightwoman.
7. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
In an era of flip-flopping politicians who seem to act solely in service of political expediency, it's only in the annals of history (and movies) that we find leadership that really measures up.
And no one's done it better on the big screen than Jimmy Stewart as junior Senator Jefferson Smith; a trusting soul who travels to D.C. only to see his idealistic hopes crushed by the graft of special interest money men.
Smith's one-man filibuster ranks among Frank Capra's most stirring movie moments. Won the Oscar for Best Original Story.
6. The Public Enemy (1931)
Among Warner Bros. Studios' deep roster of '30s tough guys, none was more iconic than James Cagney.
Here he plays Prohibition-era hoodlum Tom Powers, who works his way up the mobster ranks in Chicago and makes plenty of "hey-hey" before the chickens come home to roost (including giving his girlfriend, played by Mae Clark, a breakfast grapefruit in the kisser).
The ending, with a mummified Tom "dropped off" and propped up against his front door while his adoring mother cluelessly plumps bed pillows in anticipation of his arrival home from the hospital still sends shivers.
5. Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
The monster's back ... and this time he's got a girl.
Boris Karloff reprises his most famous role as Dr. Frankenstein's laboratory creation with Elsa Lanchester matching him shriek for grunt as his "manufactured" bride.
Director James Whale deftly juxtaposes whimsy with horror and pathos, and the movie is immeasurably aided by composer Fran Waxman's moody leitmotifs, as well as John Mescall's cinematography, which makes effective use of what he termed "Rembrandt lighting."
Not until The Godfather: Part II 40 years later would audiences witness something like this: a sequel that was an improvement on a classic original.
4. It Happened One Night (1934)
Claudette Colbert stars in this, the grandpappy of all rom-com road movies, as a pampered rich girl who skips out on her controlling father and meets "everyman" newspaper reporter Clark Gable on the open road during the height of the Depression.
The film was the first to win all five major Academy Awards (Best Picture, Director -- Frank Capra, Actor, Actress and Screenplay).
If that's not enough, sales of undershirts plummeted across the U.S. when Gable stripped off his shirt to reveal nothing but buff pecs.
3. City Lights (1931)
Charlie Chaplin in full "Little Tramp" regalia falls in love with a blind girl (Virginia Cherrill) selling flowers on the street who mistakes him for a millionaire.
Undeterred, the tramp manages to pay for an operation that restores sight to the girl.
The last scene, with Chaplin hopeful, embarrassed and yearning looking at the girl (now crestfallen) as she takes the measure of the man who she thought was her knight errant is, well, devastating.
Probably the greatest silent film (outside of some Keystone, Essanay and Mutual comedy two-reelers) that Chaplin ever made.
2. The Wizard of Oz (1939)
More than a musical or even a movie, Oz has become a rite of passage; a cherished icon of the very best of our pop-cultural patrimony.
The cast (Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, Jack Haley, Frank Morgan and Margaret Hamilton) are so spot-on that each became forever associated with their individual characters (much to the chagrin of some, like Lahr).
No matter, the movie is pure joy from the first sepia-toned Kansas scenes and the burst of Technicolor when Judy opens the farmhouse door onto the menagerie that is Oz to her final teary goodbye to her companions.
Winner of the Best Song Oscar ('Over the Rainbow') which, over the years, became inextricably linked with the Garland mythos.
1. Gone With the Wind (1939)
Author Margaret Mitchell's classic romantic page-turner of the Civil War became the most entertaining soap opera ever to hit the big screen.
Featuring largely unknown English actress Vivian Leigh in the universally coveted role of coltish heroine Scarlett O'Hara and Clark Gable -- everyone's unanimous choice -- as Rhett Butler, the movie still stands as one of the greatest achievements of storytelling on film.
From the first strains of Max Steiner's soaring score to Rhett's "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn" exit, the film pulsates with iconic scenes and lines.
Ten Oscars include Best Picture, Director (Victor Fleming), Actress (Leigh), Supporting Actress (Hattie McDaniel, the first black actor to ever receive a statuette) and Screenplay.
http://insidemovies.moviefone.com/2009/11/19/best-30s-movies/
If that's the case, the 1930s certainly measure up. The Great Depression and World War II were austere bookends to a tumultuous decade, and the types of films released three-quarters of a century ago reflect that.
Musical escapism (Swing Time, 42nd Street) and screwball comedies (Bringing Up Baby, My Man Godfrey, The Awful Truth) jollied theatergoers out of their torpor during the darkest days of '30s.
For adrenaline junkies who counted thrills and chills as a boost, Universal Studios began its classic series of horror films (Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula and The Invisible Man).
Finally, during the last year of the decade, nine seminal movies, including Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz unspooled before audiences suffused with nostalgia about a world that was soon to change forever.
40. 42nd Street (1933)
The ultimate backstage musical sees an ailing Broadway impresario (Warner Baxter) trying to put on what could be his last show. But when his star twists her ankle, what's a producer to do? Enter tap-happy Ruby Keeler -- serendipitously -- from stage left.
The Harry Warren/Al Dubin score contains such standards as the title tune, 'You're Getting to Be a Habit With Me' and 'Shuffle Off to Buffalo.'
And although the plot creaks with corniness, the melodies (even 75 years later) remain evergreen inspiring as they did a real hit Broadway musical version of the film in the 1980s.
39. The Blue Angel (1930)
Marlene Dietrich vamps it up and croons her signature song ('Falling in Love Again') as Lola Lola, a cabaret performer who mesmerizes a respected teacher (Emil Jannings) into throwing his life away for her.
Directed by Josef von Sternberg, the film had a tough time with censors in the U.S. (it was banned in soon-to-be Nazi Germany) cementing as it did Dietrich's status as one of sound film's first bona fide vixens.
38. You Can't Take It with You (1938)
Despite winning Best Picture and Director (Frank Capra) Oscars, this adaptation of the George S. Kaufman/Moss Hart Broadway comedy hasn't traveled well through the decades.
The zaniness of the eccentric Sycamore clan headed by Grandpa Vanderhof (Lionel Barrymore) seems a bit forced and less endearing with the passage of time, especially vis-à-vis Capra's more classic '30s efforts (see Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and It Happened One Night).
Still, even this "Capra-corn" is buoyed by a bright cast that includes James Stewart, Jean Arthur, Edward Arnold and a very young, pirouetting Ann Miller.
37. I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932)
Paul Muni plays a decorated World War I veteran who is wrongly convicted and forced to labor on a Southern chain gang before he can make his escape to Chicago. Trouble is; he can't outrun his past.
The movie caused many viewers to question the U.S. penal system and led to some reforms.
And the film's final scene, with a broken Muni backing furtively away into the darkness while telling how he survives ("I steal") is as chilling to view now as it was more than 70 years ago.
36. Captain Blood (1935)
Errol Flynn as a wronged Irish doctor (Peter Blood) is deported to the Caribbean but escapes and becomes a privateer in this quintessential swashbuckler that was also the actor's breakout role into major stardom.
Olivia De Havilland is radiant as Flynn's object of affection and Basil Rathbone strikes just the right duplicitous pose as Flynn's onetime partner in crime who becomes his sworn enemy.
Flynn's and Rathbone's swordplay (both men were accomplished fencers) is the film's highpoint.
35. Little Women (1933)
Director (actresses a specialty) George Cukor helmed this adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's classic Civil War-era novel of the tight-knit March sisters coming of age under the gentle tutelage of their mother Marmee (Spring Byington).
Katharine Hepburn is fine -- a case of typecasting, really -- as independent-minded Jo, with Joan Bennett as Amy and Edna May Oliver wonderfully brittle as Aunt March.
Remade a few times and with a decided feminist slant in 1994.
34. Les Miserables (1935)
Long before the hit Broadway musical, there was this definitive film version of Victor Hugo's immortal novel about one man's obsession and justice miscarried to an illogical extreme.
After serving a decade in prison for swiping a loaf of bread, Jean Valjean (Frederic March) breaks his parole and is relentlessly pursued -- for another 10 years -- by Inspector Javert (Charles Laughton) who enthusiastically subscribes to the "two strikes and you're out" brand of justice.
33. My Man Godfrey (1936)
During the height of the Depression, a dizzy New York socialite (Carole Lombard) hires a vagrant named Godfrey (William Powell), whom she meets at the city dump, to be the family butler.
Lombard and Powell -- both screwball comedy veterans -- are hysterical in a movie that takes the idle rich to task (Godfrey refuses to romance his beguiled employer, feeling that such a relationship isn't appropriate and might imperil their employer-employee compact).
The film, directed by Gregory La Cava, was nominated for Oscars in all major categories (except Best Picture) but didn't win a single statuette.
32. Dodsworth (1936)
When his frivolous wife Fran (Ruth Chatterton) refuses to act her age and begins an affair during a trip to Europe, retired automobile industry executive Sam Dodsworth (Walter Huston) begins to despair -- until he meets a woman (Mary Astor) who embodies all the steadfast traits his wife lacks.
The film, directed by William Wyler from Sinclair Lewis's novel, is a small masterpiece of the deep price marital strife exacts, particularly when a "second chance" presents itself.
31. The Awful Truth (1937)
Cary Grant and Irene Dunne are New York City high society types, married and suspicious of each other's fidelity.
No sooner do they start divorce proceedings (they split custody of their dog!) than they begin to undermine each other's early stabs at dating -- proving that you can't have it both ways, at least in vintage screwball comedies.
Directed with considerable elan by Leo McCarey, who won an Oscar.
30. Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)
Charles Laughton commands the screen in perhaps his best role, as Quasimodo the disfigured bell-ringer of Notre Dame Cathedral and literature's original 'Elephant Man.'
In heroic fashion he risks all to save the woman of his dreams, gypsy girl Esmeralda (Maureen O'Hara), from the evil clutches of the Parisian constabulary.
This adaptation of Victor Hugo's timeless novel takes liberties with the original ending (Esmeralda and Quasimodo die in the book), but, nonetheless, is the default version that most other film versions have copied.
29. Ninotchka (1939)
The famed Ernst Lubitsch directorial "touch" is on full display in Greta Garbo's penultimate film before she permanently retired from the screen and became almost as famous a recluse as she had been an actress.
Garbo plays the title character, an apparatchik who is sent to Paris to retrieve three wayward Russian envoys who've become seduced by the West and gone AWOL.
It isn't long before Ninotchka herself falls prey to the beauty of the City of Light as shown to her by a charming expatriate Count (Melvyn Douglas).
The film, which was among the first to criticize (satirize, really) the Soviet system, later became a popular stage and then film musical starring Fred Astaire in the Douglas role with Cyd Charisse as a dancing Ninotchka.
28. The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
Lightning struck twice when the cast of Captain Blood reunited three years later to invigorate this folkloric tale of everyone's favorite wealth-redistributing Anglo-Saxon and his band of merry men.
Errol Flynn is, hands down, the most photogenic bandit Sherwood Forest ever concealed, with Olivia De Havilland fetching as Maid Marian.
Throw in Basil Rathbone -- hissable as Robin's archenemy Sir Guy of Gisbourne -- and Erich Wolfgang Korngold's Oscar-winning score, and you have rollicking fun that even Little John couldn't shake a stick at.
27. The Lady Vanishes (1938)
Travelers on a trans-European train are perplexed when an elderly governess (Dame May Whitty) seemingly vanishes into thin air.
Michael Redgrave, Margaret Lockwood and Paul Lukas co-star in one of Alfred Hitchcock's better earlier efforts.
And well that is was; Hollywood-bound Hitch needed a big hit to establish his credibility Stateside, as his previous three films -- all made in Britain -- were consecutive flops.
26. Stagecoach (1939)
Although Thomas Mitchell walked off with the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his portrayal of a boozy doctor, director John Ford turned John Wayne (as "The Ringo Kid") into a household name and archetypal Western hero in this, the Duke's breakout role.
Claire Trevor, Andy Devine and John Carradine are other stagecoach passengers trying to make it to safety during an Apache uprising, and they'll fare better with gunslinger Ringo on board.
Duke and Pappy would go on to make a series of seminal Westerns together but at a price: Their co-dependent relationship, an alternating hot-and-cold friendship that lasted for decades, could flummox the most probing psychoanalyst.
25. The Invisible Man (1933)
This adaptation (forget all others) of H.G. Wells' classic novel about a mad scientist run amok under the cloak of invisibility ranks as an all-time great in the annals of film horror.
Claude Rains is deliciously malevolent as Dr. Jack Griffin (or at least his disembodied voice is, since Rains is bandaged through most of the film).
Comely Gloria Stuart (the elderly Rose from Titanic) co-stars in a movie brilliantly directed by Universal Studios' horror maestro, James Whale.
24. The Four Feathers (1939)
Honor's at stake when a British army officer (John Clements) who's just resigned his commission is branded a coward -- given a white feather -- by his three friends and fellow officers on the eve of a military campaign into the Sudan.
Ralph Richardson co-stars (as one of the chiding officers) in a movie where courage triumphs, evil is vanquished and everyone keeps a stiff upper lip.
Produced by Alexander Korda and directed by his brother Zoltan.
23. Stage Door (1937)
Rich society girl Terry Randall (Katharine Hepburn) goes incognito and tries to make it on Broadway without dropping names or finessing family connections.
Gregory La Cava directs and Ginger Rogers co-stars along with Eve Arden and Lucille Ball in this adaptation of the George Kaufman/Edna Ferber hit of young theater hopefuls sharing their ups and downs in a cramped boarding house.
This one contains the classic line (for Hepburn impersonators, especially): "The calla lilies are in bloom ..."
22. Dracula (1931)
Bela Lugosi, um, cut his teeth on this role as Transylvania's most famous nightcrawler, and in so doing spawned what has become (especially recently) a cottage industry of movies and TV shows devoted to all things that suck ... blood.
But the definitive version of Bram Stoker's vampire tale continues to be this film, with Lugosi fangtastic as the Count.
Factoid: a Spanish-language version of the movie was filmed simultaneously on the same sets (at night but sans Bela), and some horror aficionados consider it to be superior.
21. All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
The first (and perhaps best) anti-war film ever made, has Lew Ayres and his school buddies enlisting (after prodding from their jingoistic teacher) to fight for the Kaiser in World War I. It isn't long before utter disillusionment begins to set in.
The futility and absurd contradiction of battle is encapsulated in a scene when Ayres' character mortally wounds a French soldier and then tries desperately to save his life in a bombed-out crater in No-Man's Land.
Adapted from the novel by Erich Maria Remarque, the film won Oscars for Best Picture and Director (Lewis Milestone).
20. Swing Time (1936)
With its wonderful mix of tap numbers and ballroom routines, all set to a shimmering score by Jerome Kern, and a couple of first-rate comical second bananas (Victor Moore and Helen Broderick), Swing Time is probably the best-realized movie in the entire Fred & Ginger canon.
Astaire and Rogers have never been more engaging and insouciant than in 'Pick Yourself Up' or lighter than air than in the lilting 'Waltz in Swing Time'.
And Fred's 'Bojangles of Harlem' number, where he hoofs with three silhouetted shadows of himself (preceded by an inventive "line dance" with some leggy chorines), was light-years ahead of its time cinematically.
19. Modern Times (1936)
In his last silent comedy (albeit with sound effects), Charlie Chaplin rages against the machine as a human cog in a giant, soulless assembly line that evokes themes from Fritz Lang's Metropolis.
The movie comments on the desperate lengths people had to go to survive during the Depression, often sacrificing individuality and even identity in favor of modern economies of scale.
Paulette Goddard, Chaplin's wife at the time, appears as an orphan girl on the run from police.
A man of many talents, writer/director Chaplin also composed the score which includes 'Smile,' a tune famously covered by Nat King Cole, among others.
18. King Kong (1933)
We all know the big lug is putty in Fay Wray's miniscule hands, and that he falls (both figuratively and literally) in a big way for the blonde bombshell's elfin charms.
Kong's cinematic debut in 1933 was a groundbreaking event. Although the clunky stop-motion animation of the big ape swatting planes atop a Manhattan skyscraper may seem archaic now, it held movie audiences spellbound 76 years ago, making it truly the progenitor of all outsized monster movies to come.
17. The Thin Man (1934)
Urbane William Powell as Nick Charles meets his distaff match in Nora (Myrna Loy). They're a married couple (retired detective and heiress, respectively) who solve crimes as effortlessly as they mix martinis.
About the only thing out of Nick and Nora's comfort zone is their precocious, unpredictable yet beloved wire-haired fox terrier, Asta.
Based on the mystery novel by Dashiell Hammett, The Thin Man was the first of six installments starring Powell and Loy as filmdom's wittiest crime-solvers.
Factoid: The 'Thin Man' of the title is not Nick Charles but the name of the prime suspect in the film.
16. Grand Hotel (1932)
More star power is on display than in the heavens in MGM's ambitious mounting of a film (one of the first) that weaves together various stories and characters into a rich narrative tapestry.
Greta Garbo, John and Lionel Barrymore, Wallace Beery, Joan Crawford and Lewis Stone star as denizens of Berlin's luxurious Grand Hotel.
The film, which was adapted from a play based on a book, became, years later, a hit musical on Broadway.
Quotable Quotes: This is the one where Garbo emotes, "I want to be alone."
15. Frankenstein (1931)
Universal Studios ushered in the Golden Age of horror with this brilliantly directed (by James Whale) adaptation of the immortal Mary Shelley tale of science gone terribly awry.
Lurching through the role of a lifetime, Boris Karloff became indelibly associated with the misunderstood monster.
As such, he delivered a touching performance filled with pathos that was at the opposite end of the spectrum from Jack Pierce's chilling makeup; a visage that would set the iconic mold for all future pretenders to the Frankenstein's monster throne. Which just leaves us to say: "It's Alive!"
14. Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)
A vast ye maties!
A huge hit in its day (and winner of the Best Picture Oscar), Bounty chronicles the real-life mutiny led by Fletcher Christian (Clark Gable) against the puritanical Captain Bligh (Charles Laughton in full ogre mode). Neither of its two remakes -- with Marlon Brando, then Mel Gibson in the Christian role -- approached the critical and popular success of this version.
The film (which Gable considered his favorite) was just another in a series of stepping-stones that resulted in the actor being crowned the king of Hollywood.
13. M (1931)
German Director Fritz Lang's first sound film is a knockout, with Peter Lorre absolutely chilling as Hans Beckert, a serial killer and pedophile who preys on children in 1930s Berlin, all the while whistling 'In the Hall of the Mountain King' from Grieg's 'Peer Gynt.'
Although the polizei are on the case, it isn't long before the underworld decides to root out the killer themselves (his murders and the attendant publicity are bad for business).
Lang's avowed favorite among all the films he directed, M marked Lorre's first starring role and was a big reason he was typecast as a villain for years afterward.
12. Bringing Up Baby (1938)
Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn are a top-notch screwball duo in this comedy trifle directed by Howard Hawks about a nerdy paleontologist (Grant) who is wooed by a crackpot socialite (Hepburn) while both try to corral an escaped pet leopard (the titular "Baby") who's loose in the wilds of Connecticut.
Grant and Hepburn would pair up two more times in the next couple of years in equally beguiling comedies (Holiday and The Philadelphia Story), proving that their comic chemistry was deft indeed.
11. Wuthering Heights (1939)
Emily Bronte's first (and only) novel, with its overarching themes of thwarted love and class division in Victorian England, makes it to the screen mostly intact.
Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier as ill-fated lovers Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff still make schoolgirls' hearts flutter at "what might have been," and Gregg Toland's fog-shrouded cinematography (which won an Oscar) works wonders in setting the appropriate moody scene.
William Wyler directs from an angsty screenplay by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur; on sabbatical from their usual rapid-fire comedy milieu.
10. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
Disney's musicalized version of the Grimm Brothers' fairy tale is a heady mixture of goofus comedy (the dwarfs' incessant bumbling), suspense (the evil queen's machinations), romance (the prince and Snow White's cuddly moments together) and tunes ('Whistle While You Work,' 'Some Day My Prince Will Come,' 'Heigh-Ho').
In the long and storied history of Disney, few films had more naysayers that had to gulp their words than this one.
Recognizing the movie's instant significance and growing worldwide acclaim, AMPAS gave Walt an honorary Oscar in 1939.
Factoid: MGM dancer Marge Champion was the real-life model for Snow White and spent grueling hours posing for Disney animators.
9. Of Mice and Men (1939)
John Steinbeck's greatest novel is brilliantly adapted to the screen with Burgess Meredith and Lon Chaney Jr. in the leads as George and Lennie, two California migrant ranch hands (the brains and the brawn, respectively) trying to stay alive during the Depression while avoiding a bullying foreman who has it in for Lennie.
Chaney particularly registers as the mentally retarded gentle giant who just wants to raise rabbits; a portrayal a world away from his better known Wolf Man and Mummy roles. "Dean of American composers" Aaron Copland provides the evocative score.
8. Duck Soup (1933)
It's the Paramount-era Marx Brothers at their craziest before they hiked it across town to MGM and came under the ameliorating influence of studio wunderkind Irving Thalberg.
Groucho's "Rufus T. Firefly," prime minister of fictional Freedonia, in this inspired insanity that was "discovered" in the '70s by college kids who interpreted all the antic mayhem as a premeditated antiwar satire. (Groucho declares war on neighboring Sylvania for a perceived slight. Think Iraq with a laugh track.)
Includes the classic "mirror sequence" and Margaret Dumont in strict perseverance mode as Groucho's long-suffering straightwoman.
7. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
In an era of flip-flopping politicians who seem to act solely in service of political expediency, it's only in the annals of history (and movies) that we find leadership that really measures up.
And no one's done it better on the big screen than Jimmy Stewart as junior Senator Jefferson Smith; a trusting soul who travels to D.C. only to see his idealistic hopes crushed by the graft of special interest money men.
Smith's one-man filibuster ranks among Frank Capra's most stirring movie moments. Won the Oscar for Best Original Story.
6. The Public Enemy (1931)
Among Warner Bros. Studios' deep roster of '30s tough guys, none was more iconic than James Cagney.
Here he plays Prohibition-era hoodlum Tom Powers, who works his way up the mobster ranks in Chicago and makes plenty of "hey-hey" before the chickens come home to roost (including giving his girlfriend, played by Mae Clark, a breakfast grapefruit in the kisser).
The ending, with a mummified Tom "dropped off" and propped up against his front door while his adoring mother cluelessly plumps bed pillows in anticipation of his arrival home from the hospital still sends shivers.
5. Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
The monster's back ... and this time he's got a girl.
Boris Karloff reprises his most famous role as Dr. Frankenstein's laboratory creation with Elsa Lanchester matching him shriek for grunt as his "manufactured" bride.
Director James Whale deftly juxtaposes whimsy with horror and pathos, and the movie is immeasurably aided by composer Fran Waxman's moody leitmotifs, as well as John Mescall's cinematography, which makes effective use of what he termed "Rembrandt lighting."
Not until The Godfather: Part II 40 years later would audiences witness something like this: a sequel that was an improvement on a classic original.
4. It Happened One Night (1934)
Claudette Colbert stars in this, the grandpappy of all rom-com road movies, as a pampered rich girl who skips out on her controlling father and meets "everyman" newspaper reporter Clark Gable on the open road during the height of the Depression.
The film was the first to win all five major Academy Awards (Best Picture, Director -- Frank Capra, Actor, Actress and Screenplay).
If that's not enough, sales of undershirts plummeted across the U.S. when Gable stripped off his shirt to reveal nothing but buff pecs.
3. City Lights (1931)
Charlie Chaplin in full "Little Tramp" regalia falls in love with a blind girl (Virginia Cherrill) selling flowers on the street who mistakes him for a millionaire.
Undeterred, the tramp manages to pay for an operation that restores sight to the girl.
The last scene, with Chaplin hopeful, embarrassed and yearning looking at the girl (now crestfallen) as she takes the measure of the man who she thought was her knight errant is, well, devastating.
Probably the greatest silent film (outside of some Keystone, Essanay and Mutual comedy two-reelers) that Chaplin ever made.
2. The Wizard of Oz (1939)
More than a musical or even a movie, Oz has become a rite of passage; a cherished icon of the very best of our pop-cultural patrimony.
The cast (Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, Jack Haley, Frank Morgan and Margaret Hamilton) are so spot-on that each became forever associated with their individual characters (much to the chagrin of some, like Lahr).
No matter, the movie is pure joy from the first sepia-toned Kansas scenes and the burst of Technicolor when Judy opens the farmhouse door onto the menagerie that is Oz to her final teary goodbye to her companions.
Winner of the Best Song Oscar ('Over the Rainbow') which, over the years, became inextricably linked with the Garland mythos.
1. Gone With the Wind (1939)
Author Margaret Mitchell's classic romantic page-turner of the Civil War became the most entertaining soap opera ever to hit the big screen.
Featuring largely unknown English actress Vivian Leigh in the universally coveted role of coltish heroine Scarlett O'Hara and Clark Gable -- everyone's unanimous choice -- as Rhett Butler, the movie still stands as one of the greatest achievements of storytelling on film.
From the first strains of Max Steiner's soaring score to Rhett's "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn" exit, the film pulsates with iconic scenes and lines.
Ten Oscars include Best Picture, Director (Victor Fleming), Actress (Leigh), Supporting Actress (Hattie McDaniel, the first black actor to ever receive a statuette) and Screenplay.
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