Love affair 1939 - A wonderful, touching romance

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031593/?ref_=nv_sr_2
IMDB rating: 7,4

Director: Leo McCarey
Main Cast: Irene Dunne, Charles Boyer, Maria Ouspenskaya, Lee Bowman, Astrid Allwyn

"Love Affair is among the most influential romance films of its era, a smooth tale of a shipboard romance and the obstacles that love must overcome. At the core of the film are the performances of Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne as the lovers. They make the audience want their love to succeed and overcome the obstacles in its way. Leo McCarey was among Hollywood's top commercial directors of the 1930s and 1940s, and Love Affair, with its 87-minute running time and brisk pace, is a good example of his skills. In the 1950s, McCarey attempted to become a more serious director, but the public rejected his propagandist anti-Communist films. The one success he found in the 1950s was a direct remake of Love Affair - An Affair to Remember, which was the inspiration for the later hit Sleepless In Seattle." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/love-affair-v30272/

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Dark victory 1939 - An ultimate tear-jerker with Bette's victory

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031210/?ref_=nv_sr_1
IMDB rating: 7,6

Director: Edmund Goulding
Main Cast: Bette Davis, George Brent, Humphrey Bogart, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Ronald Reagan

"Adapted by Casey Robinson from a short-lived Broadway play starring Tallulah Bankhead, Dark Victory (1939) is one of Bette Davis's most affecting melodramas. Davis's superb performance taps a range of emotions, as her Judith Traherne transforms from a flippant playgirl into a spiritually redeemed terminal cancer patient, complete with a multiple hankie death scene rendered all the more poignant and moving by Davis's dramatic restraint. Fresh from her Oscar for Jezebel (1938), Davis is surrounded by a sleek production worthy of wealthy Judith, including beautiful gowns and furs by Warner designer Orry-Kelly and sparkling Ernest Haller cinematography (not to mention Humphrey Bogart and Ronald Reagan as spurned admirers). Receiving rave reviews, particularly for Davis, Dark Victory became one of four 1939 Bette Davis hits, and earned Oscar nominations for Best Picture and Best Actress. Davis, however, lost to Vivien Leigh for Gone With the Wind." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/dark-victory-v12394/

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The old maid 1939 - Davis & Hopkins: two powerhouse performances

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031750/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
IMDB rating: 7,8

Director: Edmund Goulding
Main Cast: Bette Davis, Miriam Hopkins, George Brent, Donald Crisp, Jane Bryan

"One of four superior Bette Davis vehicles from 1939, The Old Maid features Davis at her embittered best as a Civil War-era spinster and mother squaring off with her selfish cousin over the child's love. Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning Zoe Akins play from Edith Wharton's novel, Davis and co-star Miriam Hopkins's fractious off-screen relationship lent an extra dash of realism to the onscreen rivalry between Davis's wallflower Charlotte and Hopkins's flighty, conniving Delia over Charlotte's daughter by Delia's spurned suitor Clem. A victim of societal limits as well as Delia's jealousy, Charlotte's transformation into a harsh old maid to preserve illegitimate daughter Tina's reputation amply displays Davis's actorly range, from the palpable rage in her confrontations with the simperingly malicious Hopkins, to the restrained grief over her daughter's cruelty. Edmund Goulding's elegant direction keeps the Davis-Hopkins cat fight in control without losing any of the melodramatic punch, heightening the emotional payoff of the final rapprochement between mother, daughter and rival mother. Praised for its polished production and Davis's poignant, complex performance, The Old Maid became a popular hit and might have garnered Davis an Oscar nomination-but that honor came for Dark Victory (1939) instead." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/the-old-maid-v36139/

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Only angels have wings 1939 - An overlooked film in Hawks' career but it made Rita Hayworth a star

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031762/?ref_=nv_sr_1
IMDB rating: 7,8

Director: Howard Hawks
Main Cast: Cary Grant, Jean Arthur, Richard Barthelmess, Rita Hayworth, Thomas Mitchell

"Only Angels Have Wings exemplifies the complex, taciturn male bravado common to the films of Howard Hawks. Unfairly lumped into the genre of the airborne drama, it is one of Hawks' more neglected films. An experienced pilot himself, Hawks based Angels on real people and events from his time spent on the airfields; his brother was killed in a plane crash. Cary Grant plays the courageous, fatalistic lead, and Jean Arthur is the typical Hawksian heroine, strong with a subversive, gender-bending edge. Supporting player Rita Hayworth became a major Hollywood star after Angels. Scripted by Jules Furthman from a story by Hawks, Only Angels Have Wings is a treasure trove of terse, pithy dialogue: our favorite scene occurs when, upon discovering that he's about to die, Thomas Mitchell says he's often wondered how he'd react to imminent death-and, now that death is but a few moments away, he'd rather that no one else be around to witness his reaction. Though sometimes laid low by obvious miniatures, the aerial scenes in Only Angels Have Wings are by and large first-rate, earning a first-ever "best special effects" Oscar nomination for Roy Davidson and Edwin C. Hahn. The film would receive a wartime update as 1942's The Flying Tigers." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/only-angels-have-wings-v36481/

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Zangiku monogatari (The story of the last chrysanthemum) 1939 - A powerful look at the depersonalization of women

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032156/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
IMDB rating: 7,8

Director: Kenji Mizoguchi
Main Cast: Shotaro Hanayagi, Kokichi Takada, Gonjuro Kawarazaki, Kakuko Mori

A mid-career masterpiece from the great Mizoguchi, whose focus on the mistreatment of women in Japanese society was filtered through the experience of his sister's prostitution, it's known in Japan as a shinpa tragedy, one concerned with a woman who endures her fate in tears. Here, the forbidden love between a young man from a powerful family of kabuki actors and a low-caste wet nurse forms the basis for one of the director's most moving works. When the talented but undisciplined young actor Shotaro Hanyagi is banished from the family for refusing to abandon the woman, on her advice, they leave their native Tokyo that he might perfect his technique, far from his family's influence. The first film that the director felt was truly his own, it employs the fluid sequence takes and crabbing, or diagonal tracking shots, of which he was one of the medium's masters. Forced to shoot the 40-year-old actor in long shots to make him appear younger for the earlier scenes, the director was so impressed by the detached, meditative quality they afforded, that they would become a mark of his style. - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/story-of-the-late-chrysanthemums-v47122/

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Zorro's fighting legion 1939 serial - One of the best serials ever made

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032164/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
IMDB rating: 7,5

Directors: John English, William Witney
Main Cast: Reed Hadley, Sheila Darcy, William Corson, Leander De Cordova

"With a rousing chorus of house composer William Lava's 'We Ride!' opening each of the 12 chapters, Zorro's Fighting Legion remains one of Republic Pictures' finest chapterplays and thus one of the best action serials ever made. Reed Hadley, whose mellifluous voice was usually used for playing smooth villains, is perfectly cast here as the serial's dual hero, the foppish Don Diego and his masked alter-ego. Filmed entirely at the legendary Iverson ranch in Chatsworth, CA, and on standing sets at the studio in the San Fernando Valley, Zorro's Fighting Legion actually incorporates a historical setting - Mexico shortly after the 1810 revolution - with none other than Benito Juarez making an appearance in the person of Carleton Young (who rather obviously patterned his characterization after Paul Muni in the then-current Juarez). Unlike a great majority of the era's chapterplays, the cliffhanger endings are constantly intriguing, and although a sophisticated modern audience will probably never question whether Hadley or leading lady Sheila Darcy manage to extricate themselves from what seems like certain death, the solutions are always ingeniously thought out by no less than five veteran writers. A highlight of the entire serial is Yakima Canutt, as Hadley's double, performing his legendary runaway stagecoach stunt in chapter seven, a stunt carefully reconstructed forty years later by director Steven Spielberg for his homage to Republic serials, Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). Only this time, something went wrong and Canutt was seriously hurt. The mishap is left in the releases print and Canutt can be seen taking a highly unanticipated stumble while working his way from the horses back to the coach. Happily, Canutt survived once again and Zorro's Fighting Legion benefited from his groundbreaking work. The end result is a highly entertaining action adventure made even more memorable by Lava's irresistible theme song, the lyrics of which went something like this: 'We ride/ With the wind over hill, over dale/ With a spirit that cannot fail/ Men of Zorro are we/ We ride!'" - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/zorros-fighting-legion-serial-v56207/

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Le jour se leve (Daybreak) 1939 - A nice example of French poetic realism

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031514/
IMDB rating: 7,8

Director: Marcel Carne
Main Cast: Jean Gabin, Jules Berry, Arletty, Bernard Blier, Jacqueline Laurent

"Marcel Carne's Le jour se leve/Daybreak turns a murder story into an evocative examination of a man trapped by circumstances beyond his control. In the script by Carne's main collaborator Jacques Prevert, Jean Gabin's working-class François shoots a man and holes up in his room, thinking back, in an impeccably structured flashback, to the events that brought him to that moment. Carne's camera does not shy away from the desperate, claustrophobic details of working-class life, yet the possibility for human connection gives François's existence hope, until the sadistic Valentin intervenes. The play of light and shadows as François waits out the night invests the surroundings' realistic drabness with a poetic sense of doom, matching the implacable fate that awaits the decent, tormented man. Trading on Gabin's image as a strong yet tender-hearted hero, Le jour se leve's François was seen as not just a man condemned by his class and human weakness but also the image of a country about to be overcome by the diabolical outside forces of World War II." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/le-jour-se-l%C3%A8ve-v28642

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