Films released between 1940 and 1949, a decade shaped at both ends by the war. The first half is propaganda, home-front melodrama and combat pictures made while the outcome was unknown. The second half is the return, and the noir cycle that came with it. The reviews here treat the shift seriously, because the same studios and often the same directors produced both, and the change in tone across five years is one of the clearest in film history.
1940sA department store Santa claims to be the real Kris Kringle, and a lawyer must defend him in court. Miracle on 34th Street is George Seaton's 1947 American Christmas drama about a department store Santa who claims to be the…
1940sTwo Budapest shop employees who can't stand each other are unknowingly falling in love through anonymous correspondence. The Shop Around the Corner is Ernst Lubitsch's 1940 American romantic comedy adapted from Miklós László's Hungarian play Parfumerie, depicting two Budapest leather-goods…
1940sAn Episcopal bishop praying for help with his cathedral project receives an angel who arrives to assist, though not in the way expected. David Niven plays Bishop Henry Brougham.
1940sA singer retires to a Connecticut farm and converts it into an inn that only opens on holidays, leading to a rivalry with his former dance partner. Holiday Inn is Mark Sandrich's 1942 American musical depicting Jim Hardy, a singer…
1940sAn American family in 1903 St. Louis faces upheaval when the father announces a move to New York, with Christmas as the season of crisis. Meet Me in St. Louis is Vincente Minnelli's 1944 American musical depicting the upper-middle-class Smith…
1940sA magazine columnist who has fabricated her domestic Connecticut life must host a war hero and her publisher for Christmas. Christmas in Connecticut is Peter Godfrey's 1945 American romantic comedy about a magazine columnist whose readers believe she lives on…
1940sA prosecutor takes a shoplifter home to Indiana for Christmas after her trial is delayed, and they fall in love. Remember the Night is Mitchell Leisen's 1940 American romantic drama about a Manhattan prosecutor who postpones a shoplifter's trial until…
1940sMeet John Doe is Frank Capra's 1941 American political drama about a newspaper columnist who invents a fictional everyman who threatens to commit suicide on Christmas Eve in protest against social injustice, and who must then find a real person…
1940sThe Wolf Man is George Waggner's 1941 American horror film depicting Larry Talbot, an American returning to his ancestral Welsh village, who is bitten by a werewolf in the local woods and discovers he has been infected with the curse…
1940sRobert Siodmak's 1946 Hemingway adaptation. The murder happens in the first ten minutes.
1940sRobert Mitchum, Jane Greer, Kirk Douglas. Out of the Past is Jacques Tourneur's 1947 American film noir adapting Daniel Mainwaring's novel Build My Gallows High under the author's Geoffrey Homes pseudonym.
1940sHoward Hawks' 1946 Chandler adaptation. Plot incomprehensible even to the screenwriters.
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