When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences looked back at 1940, it gave its Best Picture award to Rebecca, a Daphne du Maurier joint. That one is in my top 10, but it isn't at the apex:
1. The Philadelphia Story
Directed by George Cukor
Written by Donald Ogden Stewart and Waldo Salt, from a play by Philip Barry
This one hits its high point when Katharine Hepburn starts wandering around drunk after dark.
2. His Girl Friday
Directed by Howard Hawks
Written by Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur, and Charles Lederer, from a play by Hecht and MacArthur
"Walter, you're wonderful, in a loathsome sort of way."
3. The Bank Dick
Directed by Edward F. Cline
Written by W.C. Fields
"Shall I bounce a rock off his head?" "Respect your father, darling. What kind of a rock?"
4. A Wild Hare
Directed by Tex Avery
Written by Rich Hogan
The ur-text for the Bugs Bunny cycle.
5. They Drive By Night
Directed by Raoul Walsh
Written by Jerry Wald and Richard Macaulay, from a novel by A.I. Bezzerides
The first great truck-driving movie.
6. Rebecca
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Written by Robert E. Sherwood, Joan Harrison, Philip MacDonald, and Michael Hogan, from a novel by Daphne du Maurier
The only Hitchcock movie to win a Best Picture Oscar, a fact that says much more about the Academy's prejudices than it does about the film's place in the director's body of work. It isn't top-tier Hitchcock, but it's still an enjoyably atmospheric Gothic tale.
7. Christmas in July
Written and directed by Preston Sturges
One of Sturges' sweeter comedies, but it has a sardonic bite.
8. Dance, Girl, Dance
Directed by Dorothy Arzner
Written by Tess Slesinger and Frank Davis, from a story by Vicki Baum
The flipside of all those Tex Avery cartoons about the Big Bad Wolf. (Someone should screen it with Red Hot Riding Hood as the opening short.) There is more emotional depth here than you'll find in the average low-budget melodrama, and there's an unexpected feminist edge.
9. The Grapes of Wrath
Directed by John Ford
Written by Nunnally Johnson, from a novel by John Steinbeck
Ford made genre films and he made "prestige" films. Most of the prestige pictures aren't very good, but this one's an exception: It may get a little heavy-handed at times—feel free to wince during Henry Fonda's final monologue—but it's filled with vivid moments, particularly the stunning dust-bowl sequence at the start.
10. Contraband
Directed by Michael Powell
Written by Emeric Pressburger with Powell and Brock Williams
If Peeping Tom is Powell's Psycho, then this is his 39 Steps.
Honorable mentions:
11. Foreign Correspondent (Alfred Hitchcock)
12. The Shop Around the Corner (Ernst Lubitsch)
13. The Thief of Bagdad (Michael Powell, Ludwig Berger, Tim Whelan)
14. The Great McGinty (Preston Sturges)
15. Pinocchio (Ben Sharpsteen, Hamilton Luske)
16. Swinging the Lambeth Walk (Len Lye)
17. The Westerner (William Wyler)
18. Seven Sinners (Tay Garnett)
19. Tarantella (Mary Ellen Bute, Ted Nemeth)
20. The Ghost Breakers (George Marshall)
Brilliant Sequence in an Otherwise Unexceptional Movie: Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland kiss in a cab, Andy Hardy Meets Debutante
Brilliant Sequence in an Otherwise Overpraised Move: the shaving scene in The Great Dictator
Of the films of 1940 that I haven't seen, I'm most interested in The Sea Hawk.
