Historia de un gran amor (Story of a great love) 1942 - Tragic love story Mexican style

IMDB Link
IMDB rating: 7,3

Director: Julio Bracho
Main Cast: Jorge Negrete, Domingo Solar, Gloria Marin, Julio Villareal

"Historia de un Gran Amor was one of the most successful Mexican productions of 1942, a hit with audiences and critics alike. Jorge Negrete plays Manuel, a poor boy of indeterminate lineage who falls in love with a wealthy senorita (Gloria Marin). Told by the girl's father (Julio Villareal) that he isn't a worthy suitor, Manuel vows to make something of himself and return for his love. Years later, a much-richer Manuel rides back into town, only to discover that his sweetheart has married another. But their love is too strong to be impeded by matrimonial bonds, and hero and heroine declare undying devotion to one another. Alas, their romance is foredoomed, thanks to the girl's jealous, short-tempered husband. Historia de un Gran Amor was based on El Nino de la Bola, a novel by Antonio De Alarcon." - www.allmovie.com

Download links:

In which we serve 1942 - A British wartime classic

IMDB Link
IMDB rating: 7,4

Directors: Noel Coward, David Lean
Main Cast: Noel Coward, Michael Wilding, James Donald, John Mills

"Few morale-boosting wartime films have retained their power and entertainment value as emphatically as Noël Coward's In Which We Serve. To witness Coward's sober, no-nonsense direction (in collaboration with his co-director/editor, David Lean) and to watch his straightforward portrayal of navy captain Kinross, one would never suspect that he'd built his theatrical reputation upon sophisticated drawing-room comedies and brittle, witty song lyrics. The real star of In Which We Serve is the British destroyer Torrin. Torpedoed in battle, the Torrin miraculously survives, and is brought back to English shores to be repaired. The paint is barely dry and the nuts and bolts barely in place before the Torrin is pressed into duty during the Dunkirk evacuation. The noble vessel is finally sunk after being dive-bombed in Crete, but many of the crew members survive. As they cling to the wreckage awaiting rescue, Coward and his men flash back to their homes and loved ones, and, in so doing, recall anew just why they're fighting and for whom they're fighting. Next to Coward, the single most important of the film's characters is Shorty Blake, played by John Mills. (Trivia note: Mills' infant daughter Juliet Mills appears as Shorty's baby.) Even so, the emphasis in the film is on teamwork; here as elsewhere, there can be no stars in wartime.
The movie's most important attribute was also its least appreciated: its structure, which owed a great deal to Orson Welles' Citizen Kane (1941) in breaking up the action into flashback vignettes and non-linear storytelling. Coward and Lean had studied the Welles film closely in pre-production, and they applied its lessons about film narrative to a topical, contemporary action setting. In Which We Serve is arguably the popular film that best took the breakthroughs of Citizen Kane and ran with them into new dramatic territory." - www.allmovie.com

DVD links:

Cat people 1942 - A hugely influential, psychological horror classic

IMDB Link
IMDB rating: 7,5

Director: Jacques Tourneur
Main Cast: Simone Simon, Kent Smith, Tom Conway, Jane Randolph, Jack Holt

"In just a three-year period in the 1940s, producer Val Lewton created some of the most influential and intelligent psychological horror films ever made, bringing a depth to the 'B' movie that would influence any number of independent-minded Hollywood filmmakers in later years. Lewton's first, and probably best, effort was Cat People, a psychological mood piece, more reliant on suspense and suggestion than overt 'scare stuff'. Simone Simon plays an enigmatic young fashion artist who is curiously affected by the panther cage at the central park zoo. She falls in love with handsome Kent Smith, but loses him to Jane Randolph. After a chance confrontation with a bizarre stranger at a restaurant, Simon becomes obsessed with the notion that she's a Cat Woman - a member of an ancient Serbian tribe that metamorphoses into panthers whenever aroused by jealousy. She begins stalking her rival Randolph, terrifying the latter in the film's most memorable scene, set in an indoor swimming pool at midnight. Psychiatrist Tom Conway scoffs at the Cat Woman legend - until he recoils in horror after kissing Simon. If the film's main set looks familiar, it is because it was built for Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons (Lewton later used the same set for his The Seventh Victim). Cat People was remade by director Paul Schrader in 1982." - www.allmovie.com

DVD links:

Bambi 1942 - An enduring classic animated movie from Disney and his crew

IMDB Link
IMDB rating: 7,4

Directors: James Algar, Samuel Armstrong, David Hand, Graham Heid, Bill Roberts, Paul Satterfield, Norman Wright

"The classic Felix Salter story Bambi provides the basis for this near-perfect Disney animated feature. We follow the male deer Bambi from birth, through his early childhood experiences with woodland pals Thumper the rabbit and Flower the skunk, the traumatic sudden death of Bambi's mother at the hands of hunters, his courtship of the lovely doe Faline, and his rescue of his friends during a raging forest fire; we last see the mature, antlered Bambi assuming his proper place as the Prince of the Forest. In the grand Disney tradition, Bambi is brimming with unforgettable sequences, notably the young deer's attempts to negotiate an iced-over pond, and most especially the death of Bambi's mother - and if this moment doesn't move you to tears, you're made of stone (many subsequent Disney films, including Lion King, have tried, most in vain, to match the horror and pathos of this one scene). The score in Bambi yielded no hits along the lines of 'Whistle While You Work', but the songs are adroitly integrated into the action. Bambi was the last of the 'classic' early Disney features before the studio went into a decade-long doldrums of disjointed animated pastiches like Make Mine Music." - www.allmovie.com

DVD links (Region-free):

Mrs. Miniver 1942 - A little dated, but still impressive war-time propaganda movie

IMDB Link
IMDB rating: 7,7

Director: William Wyler
Main Cast: Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon, Teresa Wright, Dame May Whitty, Reginald Owen, Henry Travers, Richard Ney, Henry Wilcoxon

"As Academy Award-winning films go, Mrs. Miniver has not weathered the years all that well. This prettified, idealized view of the upper-class British home front during World War II sometimes seems over-calculated and contrived when seen today. In particular, Greer Garson's Oscar-winning performance in the title role often comes off as artificial, especially when she nobly tends her rose garden while her stalwart husband (Walter Pidgeon) participates in the evacuation at Dunkirk. However, even if the film has lost a good portion of its ability to move and inspire audiences, it is easy to see why it was so popular in 1942 - and why Winston Churchill was moved to comment that its propaganda value was worth a dozen battleships. Everyone in the audience - even English audiences, closer to the events depicted in the film than American filmgoers - liked to believe that he or she was capable of behaving with as much grace under pressure as the Miniver family. The film's setpieces-the Minivers huddling in their bomb shelter during a Luftwaffe attack, Mrs. Miniver confronting a downed Nazi paratrooper in her kitchen, an annual flower show being staged despite the exigencies of bombing raids, cleric Henry Wilcoxon's climactic call to arms from the pulpit of his ruined church-are masterfully staged and acted, allowing one to ever so briefly forget that this is, after all, slick propagandizing.
In addition to Best Picture and Best Actress, Mrs. Miniver garnered Oscars for best supporting actress (Teresa Wright), best director (William Wyler), best script (Arthur Wimperis, George Froschel, James Hilton, Claudine West), best cinematography (Joseph Ruttenberg). Garson's Oscar win and lengthy acceptance speech became a long-running joke in Hollywood - for example, the claims that she stayed at the podium for 45 minutes or more. (Her actual acceptance remarks took around 5 minutes, still the longest-ever Oscar acceptance speech.)
Richard Ney, who plays Greer Garson's son, later married the actress and still later became a successful Wall Street financier. Mrs. Miniver was followed by a 1951 sequel, The Miniver Story, but without the wartime setting the bloom was off the rose." - www.allmovie.com

DVD links:

The pride of the Yankees 1942 - An entertaining and inspiring baseball biography of a legendary player

IMDB Link
IMDB rating: 7,8

Director: Sam Wood
Main Cast: Gary Cooper, Teeresa Wright, Babe Ruth, Walter Brennan, Dan Duryea

"Historically, only a few baseball movies have done well at the box office, mostly because audiences are lukewarm to portrayals of heroes of the diamond. Sam Wood's The Pride of the Yankees, however, is an exception, and an improbable one: neither producer Samuel Goldwyn nor star Gary Cooper knew anything about baseball, and it seemed unlikely that anyone was going to pay money to see a story in which everyone knew the outcome. Goldwyn may not have understood the sport (he thought players got promoted up through the bases, from first base to third, and couldn't understand why Gehrig was such a great player if he was 'only' a first baseman), but he understood the public better than almost any other producer. The poignancy of Lou Gehrig's story - he became a sports hero out of a modest upbringing only to see fate strike him down, and then accepted that fate with heroic stoicism - might've played well at any time, but the fact that America was heading into a war in which people with would be sacrificing themselves made the material even more topical. Cooper portrayed Gehrig with perhaps even more dignity than the real man possessed, and his romantic scenes with Teresa Wright as Gehrig's wife were warm and honest. Director Wood's understated, unpretentious telling of the tale captured the subject of baseball but also provided a snapshot of Americans in general." - www.allmovie.com

DVD links:

Yankee Doodle Dandy 1942 - A classic biography showcasing Cagney's talents

IMDB Link
IMDB rating: 7,8

Director: Michael Curtiz
Main Cast: James Cagney, Joan Leslie, Walter Huston

"Yankee Doodle Dandy was one of the best World War II-era patriotic propaganda films, and it has proven itself enduringly popular in the decades following its release. The film succeeds almost entirely on the performance of James Cagney as legendary song-and-dance performer George M. Cohan, although significant credit should also be given to director Michael Curtiz, who expertly stages each scene to display the talents of his star. The film features an over-the-top framing device in which Cohan tells his life's story in flashback to President Franklin Roosevelt. The story is effectively fiction, using only the outline of Cohan's life and some of his songs as reference points. The musical sequences are among the best in any film of the era. The film was nominated for eight Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director, and won three, including Best Actor for Cagney. The real-life Cohan died shortly after the film's release, living long enough to see it and like it despite, or perhaps because of, its lack of accuracy about his life." - www.allmovie.com

DVD links:

Now, voyager 1942 - The greatest love story of the 40's

IMDB Link
IMDB rating: 8,1

Director: Irving Rapper
Main Cast: Bette Davis, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, Gladys Cooper, Bonita Granville, John Loder

"Olive Higgins Prouty's popular novel was transformed into nearly two hours of high-grade soap opera by several masters of the trade: Warner Bros., Bette Davis, Paul Henreid, director Irving Rapper, and screenwriter Casey Robinson. Now, Voyager's potentially soapy story became a superior melodrama about one woman's self-actualization from put-upon spinster to stylish philanthropist. With Warner Bros. designer Orry-Kelly's costumes and Max Steiner's Oscar-winning score playing key supporting roles, Charlotte's transformation from a dowdy, neurotic wallflower into a beautiful, elegant woman is matched by her discovery of inner strength through love. With Davis' masterful performance showcasing her signature forcefulness as well as her capacity for romantic gentleness, Now, Voyager became a considerable hit. Henreid's neatly suggestive means for lighting cigarettes became one of the high points of Hollywood romance, and Now, Voyager's final moment of resignation and self-sacrifice has entered the pantheon of great closing lines." - www.allmovie.com

DVD links:

The Palm Beach story 1942 - A delirious screwball romance

IMDB Link
IMDB rating: 7,9

Director: Preston Sturges
Main Cast: Claudette Colbert, Joel McCrea, Mary Astor, Rudy Vallee

"The Palm Beach Story is yet another satirical gem from director Preston Sturges, who gives the story a cynical edge sharper than in other screwball comedies. In 1942, even as the Great Depression was giving way to the war-time economy of World War II, poking fun at the idle rich continued to be a popular comic motif. The film's title is less meaningful to current audiences than it was to moviegoers of the 1940s, when train travel was the most frequent way that people got between cities, and the wealthy of the eastern seaboard rode trains each winter to the warm shores of Palm Beach, Florida. The performances in The Palm Beach Story are uniformly strong, with such non-comic actors as Joel McCrea and Mary Astor showing the diversity of their talents. Claudette Colbert gives one of the best performances of her career, though it is often overshadowed by her work in It Happened One Night." - www.allmovie.com

DVD links:

The magnificent Ambersons 1942 - A mutilated but still a thrilling cinematic experience

IMDB Link
IMDB rating: 8,0

Director: Orson Welles (Fred Fleck, Robert Wise - additional sequences, uncredited)
Main Cast: Joseph Cotten, Dolores Costello, Anne Baxter, Tim Holt, Agnes Moorehead, Orson Welles

"Orson Welles' followup to Citizen Kane (1941) was utterly different from Kane in style and texture, but just as brilliant in its own way. Writer/director Welles does not appear on camera, but his voiceover narration superbly sets the stage for the movie's action, which fades in valentine fashion on Amberson Mansion, the most ostentatious dwelling in all of turn-of-century Indianapolis. At the time of its production, Orson Welles was the big noise among new young filmmakers, but not a very profitable one. His first movie, Citizen Kane, had generated press and praise, but not profits. RKO, never a profitable studio and in danger of receivership for much of its history, needed The Magnificent Ambersons to be a hit. Welles had shot Ambersons true to Booth Tarkington's novel and elicited sterling performances from his cast. But Tarkington's story - which Welles deeply loved, having previously dramatized it on radio with himself in the role of George Amberson Minafer - centered on an insufferable prig, selfish, nasty, and vain. Preview audiences came away disliking the movie because they disliked its central character, brilliantly portrayed by Tim Holt. RKO drastically recut the movie, poisoning its relationship with Welles (and with composer Bernard Herrmann, who came to Welles' defense and ended a promising career at the studio). Holt's George Amberson Minafer was, in many ways, the antecedent of Laurence Harvey's Raymond Shaw in The Manchurian Candidate (1962), a character described by the closest thing he has to a friend as 'impossible to like'. And audiences weren't much more ready for Harvey's character in 1962 than they were for Holt's in 1942." - www.allmovie.com

DVD links:

To be or not to be 1942 - A controversial classic

IMDB Link
IMDB rating: 8,3

Director: Ernst Lubitsch
Main Cast: Carole Lombard, Jack Benny, Robert Stack, Felix Bressart, Lionel Atwill

"Ernst Lubitsch directs the 1942 political satire classic To Be or Not to Be, which marked the final screen appearance of comedienne Carole Lombard. To Be or Not to Be remains one example of a wartime propaganda film that retains its freshness and entertainment value outside its original historical context. Made during World War II by German expatriate Ernst Lubitsch, the film features anti-fascist themes that never overwhelm the characters, and it allows star Jack Benny to fashion a likeable performance that transcends the story's political content. Where many topical comedies veer into either serious drama or excessive sentimentality, To Be or Not to Be maintains its satiric edge without descending into self-parody. The film works as a comedy, as a political thriller, as an anti-fascist satire, and as an allegorical parable. The dialogue contains sharp, ironic observations aimed at the absurdity of totalitarian dogma. While Nazis and Hitler were Lubitsch's specific targets, the film retains a more universal mockery of government oppression and the willingness of bureaucrats to accept their tasks without questioning them. The movie was remade in 1983 starring Mel Brooks and real-life wife Anne Bancroft." - www.allmovie.com

Download links:

(DVDrip, avi, 727 MB):

http://dfiles.eu/files/xe0w9vxls

Casablanca 1942 - A truly classic masterpiece

IMDB Link
IMDB rating: 8,6

Director: Michael Curtiz
Main Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, S. Z. Sakall

"One of the most beloved American films, this captivating wartime adventure of romance and intrigue from director Michael Curtiz defies standard categorization. It's hard to imagine a movie in which the leads are better cast: Humphrey Bogart's tough, effortless cool gives Rick the ideal balance of honor and cynicism, Ingrid Bergman's luminous beauty makes it seem reasonable that men would fight for Ilsa's affections, and Paul Henreid's Victor is cold enough that you can imagine Ilsa's being tempted by her old flame. The supporting cast is superb down the line; Claude Rains, Peter Lorre, Conrad Veidt, Sydney Greenstreet, Dooley Wilson, and S.Z. Sakall are all so memorable that one tends to forget that none is onscreen for very long. The screenplay often walks the border of cliché, but the story has just enough twists, and the dialogue so much snap, that it stays compelling throughout. And Michael Curtiz knew just when to turn on the schmaltz and when to cut it off. Casablanca blends romance, suspense, humor, and patriotic drama with such skill that one imagines it must have happened by accident, and the movie looks better with each passing year." - www.allmovie.com

DVD links: