World War II began for the US this year, so movie production, as you can imagine, grinded to halt for noble reasons. That being said, there’s still some gems that were released, including what many people believe to be one of the greatest movies ever released.
You’re going to be “surprised” to hear that Japanese war propoganda did NOT do well in 1941 in the US. That being said, out of time, Kenji Mizoguchi’s is still a rousing fun time, detailing the herculean efforts of 47 samurai to avenge the loss of their leader against great odds.
Fritz Lang, German director/defector from the Nazi regime, probably wrote this movie with a nod to his own situation. Walter Pidgeon plays a big animal hunter who finds Hitler’s estate, toying with shooting the Fuhrer. He’s found by George Sanders, turning Pidgeon into the hunted, living in constant paranoia of his situation.
Not quite among the classic Disney fare, this one’s still simple and sweet, conveying a message of tolerance and acceptance. Separated from his mother, an elephant uses his large ears to become one of the best acts at the circus.
Lon Cheney is the werewolf of Universal monster movie fame. Bitten by Bela Lugosi trying to save a woman he loves, Cheney, in a horrifying transformation, becomes a werewolf every full moon, doomed to walk the earth this way forevermore.
Though a minor travesty that it won Best Picture, John Ford’s movie is still a solid entertainment. The movie, told from Roddy McDowall’s child point of view, is about Maureen O’Hara and Donald Crisp’s working class mining family, as they go through a series of life obstacles together while McDowall grows up.
An Alfred Hitchcock trial run that’s mostly suspenseful and entertaining. Joan Fontaine plays a woman who falls in love with the enigmatic Cary Grant, slowly realizing that something more sinister or evil might be afoot despite appearances to the contrary.
One of Preston Sturges’s finest films, and a great romcom premise. Charles Coburn and Barbara Stanwyck play con artists, trying to extract all sorts of money out of naive young men. In this case, their target is Henry Fonda’s aw shucks beer magnate, who becomes smitten with Stanwyck as expected; however, she finds herself smitten to him as well, throwing a wrinkle into the proceedings.
In a decade of thrillers, John Huston’s stand maybe tallest. Humphrey Bogart plays Sam Spade, a, you guessed it, detective in San Francisco. Put in charge of protecting Mary Astor, Huston’s screenplay then does what great noirs do: go down a maze of twists, double crossing and paranoia/suspense.
Beginning with one of the great openings in movie history, Orson Welles’s masterpiece is something special. Loosely based on William Randolph Hearst, Charles Foster Kane (Welles) starts from poor beginnings to become a wealthy influential journalist and political magnate, who’s lust, both for power and women, seek to undo this titan of celebrity and influence. The acting, the writing, the cinematography: everything comes together to make a motion picture as fine as this one, as great today as it was at the time.
