The ten best movies of 1939Aug 30 '02 (Updated Sep 17 '11) Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line 2,6,7,8,9,10, 11 have jerked more than a few tears but this list is a triangular peg in a round hole
Lacking a best movies of the 1930s category, I decided that since so many 1939 films could qualify as "tearjerkers," to post my list here (if I were doing a list of the best tearjerkers ever, Dark Victory and Love Affair would have to go on it from 1939). --- In addition to being the date of the beginning of the war in Europe, 1939 was Hollywood's annus mirabulis, a year in which some of the most iconic and beloved American movies appeared: Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Wuthering Heights, Dark Victory, The Women, Gunga Din, Beau Geste, Destry Rides Again, The Young Mr. Lincoln, Stagecoach, Of Mice and Men, and Goodbye, Mr. Chips. It was also the year of "Garbo Laughs" (in Ninotchka) and of Ingrid Bergman's American debut (remaking her Swedish hit "Intermezzo") . A number of performers turned in more than one outstanding performance in that year's bumper crop of American movies, including James Stewart in the title roles of "Destry Rides Again" and "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," and Bette Davis's Empress Carlotta going mad in "Juarez", playgirl going blind in "Dark Victory" Elizabeth I in "Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, and the title role in "The Old Maid." Although his roles were not as central, the champion for appearing in the most outstanding 1939 films was Thomas Mitchell, who won a best-supporting actor Academy Award for the drunkard Doc Boone in "Stagecoach," played Scarlett O'Hara's father in "Gone with the Wind, a newspaperman in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, the "king of the beggars" in "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," a grounded pilot in Howard Hawks's "Only Angels Have Wings." Gone with the Wind is in many ways not even a good movie, though it was judged the best movie of that best of Hollywood years. 1939 was a year of stars more than of auteur directors and it is the performances of Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable that make Gone with the Wind worth slogging through. ("Tara's Theme" is also memorable.) Victor Fleming directed not only GWTW but another movie that is all but inevitable on a list of best pictures. It has been decades since I last saw The Wizard of Oz, but there are images and songs that are seared into my brain from repeated childhood viewings (beginning when I was genuinely frightened by Margaret Hamilton's wicked witch). Judy Garland was compelling here, and I imagine still is. One of the least known and most interesting films from Hollywood's 1939 bumper crop was Juarez, directed in a very German expressionist manner by German refugee William Dieterle. The great Paul Muni (the original Scarface, and a recent Oscar winner in the title role of "The Lives of Emile Zola") played the stolid leader of Mexico's second successful war of independence. The perplexed colonial (Hapsburg) rulers Maxmillian and Carlotta, brilliantly and (too?) sympathetically played by Brian Aherne and Bette Davis are more interesting. The cinematography of Tony Gaudio is outstanding, especially in the scenes in which Carlotta loses her already-tenuous hold on reality. "Stagecoach" is the more honored and better remembered John Ford film from 1939. Thomas Mitchell and Claire Trevor are entertaining in it, but I think that "The Young Mr. Lincoln" also manages to be entertaining with Henry Fonda superb in the title role and Ward Bond a suitably nasty villain. I'll take the parade from The Young Mr. Lincoln over the burning of Atlanta set piece in GWTW, too. The cinematography of Bert Glennon contributed mightily to the reputation of John Ford (Ford, Glennon, and Fonda also collaborated on "Drums Along the Mohawk" in 1939. Ninotchka Ernst Lubitch's best film puts the team of Greta Garbo and Melvyn Douglas (who also costarred in "As You Desire Me" and "Two-Faced Woman") to great use in a screenplay about a dour Soviet agent Comrade Nina (Garbo) lightened up by a smugly self-confident playboy (Douglas). Marlene Dietrich also lightened up in 1939 in after the hyperstylized von Sternberg films had become increasingly less commercially successful. In Destry Rides Again she has a famous bar-room fight and sings "The Boys in the Backroom" and dies for love, but the film belongs to James Stewart, prefiguring his role in "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" in some ways and Gary Cooper's "Sergeant York" in others. His comic timing was perfect (and rewarded the next year in "The Philadelphia Story," though for me his great performances were more complex characters in postwar films "Rear Window," "Vertigo," and "Anatomy of a Murder"). The ending is perfunctory; Hal Mohr's cinematography impressive. Stewart's also undertook the title character in Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. The plot is hokier than that of "The Wizard of Oz," but the actors run with what they are given. Stewart is superb as the naive Boy Scout leader appointed to the Senate, but so are Jean Arthur, Claude Rains, Harry Carey, Eugene Pallette, Edward Arnold, and Thomas Mitchell. There is both broad humor and wit and Steward is heartbreaking before triumphing exhausted. Goodbye, Mr. Chips is more Capra-corny than "Mr. Smith" (though directed by Sam Wood (who would later be responsible for "King's Row" and "For Whom the Bell Tolls," though he had recently directed the Marx brothers in "A Day at the Races" (1937)). Ably assisted by Greer Garson's breakout performance, Robert Donat turns sentimentality into gold (and not just the gold-plating of the Oscar he won in the biggest upset before Judy Holliday's). The tear-jerker of the year (with fierce competition from Dark Victory, Wuthering Heights, Goodbye Mr. Chips, and GWTW) was Leo McCarey's Love Affair. He remade it in color in 1957 as "An Affair to Remember," the quintessential "chick flick (according to "Sleepless in Seattle") with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr, but the 1939 black-and-white version is both more ecstatic and more pained with Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne. The critical consensus for the best film of 1939 is Jean Renoir's Mozartian Rules of the Game (singular in French: La R�gle du jeu). "Rules" is at or near the top of critics' lists of the best films of all times. Among other things, it shows that deep-focus photography was not invented for "Citizen Kane," the next year. Although officially an "entertainment" rather than social criticism, it does not take much imagination to see a critique of fascism in this upstairs-downstairs comedy. I hope that topping my list with this unsentimental masterpiece will make my list safe for diabetics with so many of the other choices high in treacle (even "Ninotchka" is a little sweet, and perhaps I should dump GWTW and add George Cukor's nest of vipers, "The Women"). Choosing ten is hard enough, but if Victor Fleming could direct two such different movies as "The Wizard of Oz" and "Gone with the Wind," I should be able to rank-order my picks. So: (1) Rules of the Game (2) The Wizard of Oz (3) Ninotchka (4) The Young Mr. Lincoln (5) Destry Rides Again (6) Love Affair (7) Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (8) Juarez (9) Goodbye, Mr. Chips (10) Gone with the Wind (11) Dark Victory I've also posted lists of the ten greatest movies of all time, my favorite movies best non-English-language movies by country, best noirs, best French organized crime movies, best westerns not set in the American west, best romantic movies with happy endings, best romantic movies in which the lovers do not end up together for reasons other than the death of one or both of them, best romantic movies including the death of a lover, best religious movies celebrating a religious figure, best movies portraying the dark side of religion, best holidaze (Christmas and Thanksgiving) movies, best rock-n-roll movies, best musicals, best gay feature film, best gay documentary film, best cult movies, best black comedies, best World War II movies, best post-WWII German films, best epics, and best anti-epics, best movies of the 1940s, the 1980s, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, and my favorite tearjerker songs.  |
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