The Wolf Man (1941): It’s intelligent, well acted (my personal favorite, Claude Rains, is a stand out), well written and being short (70 mins.), it’s TIGHT. Hits all bases.
The 1931 Maltese Falcon, with Ricardo Cortez, has Bebe Daniels as the femme fatale. She burns up the screen. Much better casting than Mary Astor and that horrid horrid hairstyle.
Oh, and Cortez is nicely sleazy as Spade.
I’m going to add The Oxbow Incident, from 1943. A very dark film about three men falsely accused of cattle rustling and the ensuing vigilantism. Nominated for the Oscar that year. A stellar cast of Henry Fonda, Dana Andrews, Tony Quinn, Harry Morgan. I probably like this one even better than Sierra Madre.
Another would be The Grapes of Wrath from 1940, directed by John Ford, starring Henry Fonda, John Carradine and Oscar-winning Jane Darwell as Ma Joad.
Stella Dallas (1937)
A mother raises her daughter to have a shot at rising socio-economically. I found it heartbreaking how her mother ended up just watching her daughter’s life from afar.
Speaking of Cagney, I think he’s at his best in Yankee Doodle Dandy, directed by the same guy who directed Casablanca - Michael Curtiz.
The Adventures of Robin Hood–definitive swashbuckler. Just have to drop everything when it’s on. Also directed by Michael Curtiz; a busy bee–173 directing gigs, 1912-1961.
I was going to say Stagecoach before I ever saw your post. A superb movie with superb acting (even John Wayne) and a great story line.
Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind will have to be on my list. Not because of any cinematic wonderousness, but because I really enjoyed them the first time I saw them. The flying monkeys freaked me out, tho. In both movies.
It Happened One Night was enjoyable, too. Almost felt modern (except for the stuff that wasn’t).
Nosferatu and Phantom of the Opera for their creepy factors.
I would have loved to see Gertie the Dinosaur, but I will have to be satisfied with a few drawings.
Broken Blossoms (silent)
Dark Victory
The Grapes of Wrath
How Green Was My Valley
In the Good Old Summertime
Inherit the Wind
Mildred Pierce (released the day I was born)
Now, Voyager
The Wizard of Oz
My all-time favorite movie is *To Be Or Not To Be *(1942), with Jack Benny and Carole Lombard. Another film from my top 10 list is Metropolis (1927). Personally, I think the best screwball comedy is The Awful Truth (1937), but I’m a huge Irene Dunne fan. My Favorite Wife is pretty good as well. I love most of Hitchcock’s films, but one I can watch over and over, even when I know the ending, is The Lady Vanishes (1938). Another suspense film I can watch over and over is Gaslight.
I really like silent films, and so I’d like to mention Intolerance (1916), *Broken Blossoms *(1919), The Unknown (1927), and Lon Chaney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923), as well as FF Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922).
I’ll +1 most of the films already named, and I’d name more, but my post could go on forever.
I believe that it was is first serious Western, was it not?
“Give her my love.” “I’d give her my own, if she was wearing that outfit!”
Ha! My grandmother was in that! She was also in The Horn Blows at Midnight, which Jack Benny disavowed but actually is enjoyable.
It’s an example of how the last generation of screwball comedies often included surrealistic touches, along with Never Give a Sucker an Even Break and It Happens Every Spring, and It Grows on Trees
His first hit western, yes. He was one of the first, if not THE first singing cowboy, hard as that may be to imagine.
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The Grapes of Wrath…I have no words. This is more than a movie, it shoots straight to the heart, it is a masterpiece.
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Dinner At Eight (1933) - yes, it’s old. Yes, it’s barely a ‘talkie’. Watch this movie with all its various intriguing sub-stories and you won’t even think of that. almost like an anthology, sadly not made any more… It is sad, witty, silly, sexy, and unforgettable. Jean Harlow is at her absolute peak, dressed in the very height of Adrian tackiness, voice like a brass gong, and just devastatingly beautiful and trashy in measure. Marie Dressler, hideous grand dame fallen on hard times - “to think I left my hotel today a young girl - look at me now!!” John Barrymore, hard-core, narcissistic, flat-broke ex matinee idol, a dipsomaniac hoping for a comeback and getting the hard, hard, hard truth told to him. It is just fascinating, and could (but certainly never should) be updated, but if that happened it would lose its retro charm. I never get tired of Dinner At Eight.
I have three favorites made and released before 1950:
- A Night At The Opera (1935) you know why
- King Kong (1933) you know why
- The Mark Of Zorro (1940) because this 50’s kid loves the standard Zorro story, and this was the best telling. Bonus points for the Spaniards looking and sounding British.
Although I HATE people who “just can’t help breaking the rules” in threads like this, I just can’t help my own self doing so this one time, because had we been allowed to include movies released in 1950, one of my all-time top five favorite films would have topped my list:
- Harvey funny as hell, and practically every line of dialogue is pure gold.
There are a lot I like, but I can’t think of any offhand that I’d call a favorite, since there are even more I like since 1950.
But I would like to comment on a couple of my favorite moments in two movies already mentioned.
In The Bishop’s Wife, Cary Grant takes Loretta Young ice skating. There’s a distant shot of Grant’s stunt double, presumably an Olympian, doing all kinds of leaps and spins, and then a closeup of a stationary Cary Grant as he grins and spreads his arms like “TA-DA!!!” It’s just so cheesy that it makes me laugh every time.
And Samson and Delilah was so hilariously miscast with Victor Mature — I think it was Groucho Marx who said he had bigger boobs than Delilah. But there was one absolutely epic moment in it, when Samson is straining at the columns holding up the building, and everyone in the crowd is laughing and jeering, and then you hear this almost subsonic “grrrrrrate” and see one of the columns crack, and the crowd becomes dead silent, and then the column splits, and they all run for their lives. Maybe my favorite scene in cinema.
Aside from many already mentioned I’d have to add The Philadelphia Story and His Girl Friday.
I do so like Cary Grant.
Casablanca. No more need be said.
Yeah, but that is not a serious Western. 