Genroku chushingura (The 47 ronin) 1941 - An epic tale about the legendary Japanese vendetta

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IMDB rating: 7,5

Director: Kenji Mizoguchi
Main Cast: Tokusaburo Arashi, Yoshizaburo Arashi, Daisuke Kato

"Director Mizoguchi abandoned his usual fascination with modern-day social problems in favor of epic patriotism that he shows here. Produced over a two-year period, the stylistic elements are all in place in The 47 ronin: elegant composition, minimal cutting, subtle but telling use of a tracking camera, and concern with psychology rather than action. This is not, in fact, an easily accessible film for Westerners, as it is concerned with ritual and customs that aren't always made explicit. It is a movie of long takes of formal conversation, as the ronin loyal to their late master wrestle with how they will respond to his humiliating death. Even if the reference points aren't always clear, the emotions expressed are universal, and it's fascinating to imagine Japanese theatrical audiences in the early days of World War II watching this tale of men of honor willing to give up everything, including their lives, to uphold their principles." - www.allmovie.com

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(720p, 4 GB):

http://uploaded.net/file/brb43hdp/Japanese_The_47_Ronin_1941_720p_WEB_DL_H264_KG_4LMXEyS37TnYRT.part1.rar 
http://uploaded.net/file/jrlbouja/Japanese_The_47_Ronin_1941_720p_WEB_DL_H264_KG_4LMXEyS37TnYRT.part2.rar 
http://uploaded.net/file/znq9p1es/Japanese_The_47_Ronin_1941_720p_WEB_DL_H264_KG_4LMXEyS37TnYRT.part3.rar 
http://uploaded.net/file/9gesaxxx/Japanese_The_47_Ronin_1941_720p_WEB_DL_H264_KG_4LMXEyS37TnYRT.part4.rar

Dumbo 1941 - A wonderful animation from Disney's classic era

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IMDB rating: 7,3

Directors: Samuel Armstrong, Norman Ferguson, Wilfred Jackson, Jack Kinney, Bill Roberts, Ben Sharpsteen, John Elliotte

"The shortest of Disney's major animated features Dumbo involves a baby elephant with unusually large ears. Ostracized from the rest of the circus animals, poor Dumbo is even separated from his mother, who is chained up in a separate cage after trying to defend her child. Only brash-but-lovable Timothy Mouse offers the hand of friendship to Dumbo, encouraging the pouty pachyderm to exploit his 'different' qualities for fame and fortune. After trepidatiously indulging in a vat of booze, Dumbo awakens in a tall tree. Goaded by a group of jive-talking crows, Dumbo discovers that his outsized ears have given him the ability to fly. The musical score by Frank Churchill and Oliver Wallace won Oscars for them both." - www.allmovie.com

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Meet John Doe 1941 - Capra's dark and powerful comedy about the power of the press

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IMDB rating: 7,7

Director: Frank Capra
Main Cast: Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward Arnold, Walter Brennan, Spring Byington, James Gleason, Gene Lockhart, Rod La Rocque

"Meet John Doe is the Frank Capra movie that spoke most directly to the mood of the United States at the time that it was made. It's a fundamentally pessimistic film, without a positive resolution, and also an astonishingly mature movie - virtually groundbreaking as a 'message' movie aimed at a mainstream audience. Appearing in 1940, it closed out a decade that had been dominated by despair, disillusionment, dislocation (economic and personal), and desperation, a period characterized by a reliance on often inept government officials or duplicitous would-be leaders. All of these elements are present in Meet John Doe from its opening scene (a mass layoff at a newspaper), and they get addressed over and over again as the plot unfolds. The movie also had the courage to put some very attractive stars - Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck - in some very unattractive roles, as two people putting over a huge fraud on a public that trusts them. It wasn't considered a very successful film in its own time, being a little too dark and mature amid the ominous reality of the European war being waged at the time, but it is probably the best of Capra's 'message' pictures and his best slice-of-life drama other than It Happened One Night." - www.allmovie.com

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https://archive.org/download/meet_john_doe/meet_john_doe_512kb.mp4

Here comes Mr. Jordan 1941 - A charming classic fantasy

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IMDB rating: 7,8

Director: Alexander Hall
Main Cast: Robert Montgomery, Evelyn Keyes, Claude Rains, Rita Johnson, Edward Everett Horton, James Gleason

"The usually debonair Robert Montgomery stepped out of character in this classic comic fantasy to play a clean-cut boxer, Joe Pendleton, who's been sent to heaven before his time. Mr. Jordan, a kind of celestial executive, rectifies the error by loaning Pendleton the body of a millionaire named Bruce Farnsworth who's just been murdered by his wife. When she learns that he's alive again, the fun begins. The kind of beautifully executed film that turns the auteur theory on its head, it's driven by a script that always manages to keep its fiendishly complicated farcical maneuvers in perfect focus. Montgomery is wonderful as the simple boxer who just wants a shot at the title, as is Claude Rains as the dryly sardonic angel. But it's veteran James Gleason's Academy Award-winning performance as Joe's manager Max Corkle that steals the film. The scene in which Joe finally convinces Max that his spirit is inhabiting the body of Farnsworth is a masterpiece of comic acting.  Here Comes Mr. Jordan is one of the most consistently clever romantic comedies of the 1940s, and richly deserving of the Oscars won by screenwriters Sidney Buchman, Seton I. Miller and Harry Segall. A sequel, Down to Earth, was filmed in 1947, with Roland Culver as Mr. Jordan; and in 1978, the original Jordan was remade by Warren Beatty as Heaven Can Wait." - www.allmovie.com

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Sergeant York 1941 - A great war movie with excellent performance by Cooper

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IMDB rating: 7,8

Director: Howard Hawks
Main Cast: Gary Cooper, Walter Brennan, Joan Leslie

"Sergeant York is among the best of war-time propaganda films, with a superb performance by Gary Cooper in the title role. It was natural that, as the United States entered World War II, Hollywood would want to make a movie about the life of Alvin York, the most decorated U.S. soldier in World War I. The real-life York set several conditions for the production: (1) That the film contains no phony heroics, (2) that Mrs.York not be played by a Hollywood 'glamour girl' and (3) That Gary Cooper portray York on screen. All three conditions were met, and the result is one of the finest and most inspirational biographies ever committed to celluloid. It is a tribute to the skills of director Howard Hawks that, removed from its historical context, Sergeant York remains one of the most powerful screen biographies, though it perhaps falls short when compared with the realism of such later war-bios as Patton. The battle sequences, edited by William Holmes, are usually sharp, and Cooper gives one of the most memorable performances of his outstanding career. Sergeant York was nominated for eleven Academy Awards, winning two, Cooper for Best Actor and Homes for Best Film Editing." - www.allmovie.com

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How green was my valley 1941 - The classic masterpiece of John Ford

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IMDB rating: 7,9

Director: John Ford
Main Cast: Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O'Hara, Anna Lee, Donald Crisp, Roddy McDowall, John Loder, Sarah Allgood, Barry Fitzgerald

"How Green Was My Valley is fondly remembered by fans of director John Ford for its loving recreation of a Welsh coal mining village. Spanning some fifty years in the life of its protagonist, the film presents an often poignant portrait of the good and bad of small town life. At the center of the story is the dehumanization brought by increasing technology; the scenes in which more efficient machinery makes some of the mines' best workers unneeded and unemployed remain relevant to today's audiences and our environment of shifting corporations and uncertain security. Ford scholars differ on where to rank How Green Was My Valley - indeed there is no clear consensus on what film critics and historians consider to be Ford's greatest - but it was a popular choice as the best film of 1941. Based on the novel of the same name by Richard Llewellyn, How Green Was My Valley won five Academy Awards in 1941, including Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (Crisp), Best Art Director, Best Cinematography, and Best Picture (beating Citizen Kane). The book was later adapted into a 1975 BBC miniseries." - www.allmovie.com

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The lady Eve 1941 - An outstanding romantic comedy showing Sturges' perfection

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IMDB rating: 8,0

Director: Preston Sturges
Main Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda, Charles Coburn, Eugene Pallette,William Demarest

Preston Sturges wrote and directed this classic romantic comedy starring Henry Fonda and Barbara Stanwyck, who are involved in a scintillating battle of the sexes, as Sturges points up the terrors of sexual passion and the unattainability of the romantic ideal. The Lady Eve is among the funniest films of the World War II era, and one of the few comedies whose humor has survived both cultural changes and shifting audience demographics. Directed by Preston Sturges with his usual efficiency, the battle-of-the-sexes story allows star performers Henry Fonda and Barbara Stanwyck to shine, though supporting performer William Demarest often steals the show. As was common in the censorship-laden war era, Sturges resorted to several clever sexual symbols. Fonda's character is an expert on snakes, and there is a funny moment when the audience catches the phallically suggestive book title, Are Snakes Necessary?. The dialogue is consistently bright and peppy. - www.allmovie.com

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Sullivan's travels 1941 - One of the finest movies about movies ever made

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IMDB rating: 8,2

Director: Preston Sturges
Main Cast: Joel McCrea, Veronica Lake

"The most ambitious of Preston Sturges' string of 1940s classics, Sullivan's Travels is a brilliant mixture of genres, combining giddy comedy with often brutal realism, made all the more powerful by the contrast. The first part of the film, which details the botched attempts of idealistic film director John Sullivan (Joel McCrea) to leave Hollywood, smoothly blends outrageous slapstick with Sturges' customary satirical dialogue, and includes classic exchanges between Sullivan and his Hollywood producers (Robert Warwick and Porter Hall) and his hilariously droll and opinionated butler (Robert Greig). The tone of the movie changes considerably with three bravura sequences. The first, a graceful, wordless section in which Sullivan and his nameless companion (Veronica Lake, showing a nice flair for comedy) spend a night among the homeless, proves that, although Sturges is noted mainly for his writing, he was also a sensitive and talented director. The second, a violent chain-gang episode almost shocking in its stark realism, and the third, a short musical passage set in a rural church, hammer home the movie's apparent moral: that, as Sullivan puts it, 'there's a lot to be said for making people laugh'. Sturges may seem to be ridiculing a cinema of ideas, but his final joke is that Sullivan's Travels supports a different argument: that comedy and serious drama can co-exist quite happily after all." - www.allmovie.com

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The Maltese falcon 1941 - The first film noir

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IMDB rating: 8,2

Director: John Huston
Main Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Gladys George, Peter Lorre, Barton MacLane, Sydney Greenstreet

"Adapting Dashiell Hammett's novel - and staying as close to the original story as the Production Code allowed - first-time director John Huston turned The Maltese Falcon into a movie often considered the first film noir. In his star-making performance as Sam Spade, Humphrey Bogart (taking over from George Raft) embodied the coolly ruthless private eye who recognizes the dark side of humanity, in all its greedy perversity, and who feels its temptations, especially when they are embodied by a woman. While Huston's mostly straightforward visual approach renders The Maltese Falcon an instance of early noir more in its hardboiled attitude than in the chiaroscuro style common to other films noirs, the collection of venal characters, colorfully played by Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, and Elisha Cook, Jr.; Mary Astor's femme fatale; and Bogart's morally relativistic Spade pointed the way to the mid-1940s flowering of noir in Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity (1944), Otto Preminger's Laura (1944), and Howard Hawks's The Big Sleep (1946). A critical as well as popular success, The Maltese Falcon was nominated for three Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Screenplay, establishing Huston as a formidable dual talent and Bogart as the archetypal detective antihero who can be as unscrupulous as the next guy but also adheres to his own personal code of honor." - www.allmovie.com

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Citizen Kane 1941 - Considered as the finest American film ever made

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IMDB rating: 8,4

Director: Orson Welles
Main Cast: Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Dorothy Comingore, Agnes Moorehead, Ruth Warrick, Everett Sloane

"Orson Welles's film debut reconceived Hollywood conventions of story-telling and visual structure, suggesting the essential mystery of a person's inner self and inspiring countless filmmakers with its technical accomplishments. Already famous for his work in radio and theater, 24-year-old Welles was given complete creative freedom when RKO Pictures signed him in 1939. Co-authored with Herman J. Mankiewicz, the Kane screenplay dispensed with linear biographical narrative in favor of flashbacks recounting Kane's life from several points of view, ostensibly to solve the puzzle of Kane's deathbed utterance. Collaborating with cinematographer Gregg Toland, Welles used specially constructed sets to compose the film through a number of long takes in deep focus and high-contrast black-and-white, creating meaning through the juxtaposition of multiple actions and characters in a single take rather than through numerous edits. While the imagery and the carefully choreographed soundtrack provide clues to Kane's nature as he ages from innocent boy to corrupt magnate, he ultimately remains an enigmatic figment of memory. Kane's real-life model, however, was no mystery; newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst tried to suppress what he considered an unflattering portrait of himself. While RKO rejected an offer to reimburse their costs in exchange for burning the negatives, Citizen Kane's release was hindered by Hearst's campaign against it. Though non-Hearst papers recognized it as a vanguard work, and it was nominated for nine Oscars (four for Welles himself), Kane was not a popular hit. Despite the film's artistic approbation and subsequent wide-ranging influence, from 1940s film noir to the French New Wave to American film school grads, Welles never again had creative control in Hollywood." - www.allmovie.com

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