{"id":3664,"date":"2014-12-22T17:07:22","date_gmt":"2014-12-22T17:07:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tenkmovies.com\/?p=3664"},"modified":"2026-04-06T18:51:55","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T18:51:55","slug":"best-of-the-1940s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/tenkmovies.com\/?p=3664","title":{"rendered":"Best of the 1940s"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"His<\/p>\n

His Girl Friday<\/a><\/em>\u00a0(1940)<\/p>\n

Walter Burns (Cary Grant) is an editor for The Morning Post<\/em>.\u00a0 His ex-wife, Hildy Johnson (Rosalind Russell), was a star reporter for his paper, but quit when she got engaged to Bruce Baldwin (Ralph Bellamy).<\/p>\n

Walter\u00a0goes to great lengths to convince Hildy to return, including framing Bruce for various petty crimes, but\u00a0she remains steadfast in her desire to leave until she finds an escaped convict and wants to write his story.<\/p>\n

Few people are as charming and debonair as Cary Grant. He perfected the smooth, wise cracking, smart ass which has become one of the major tropes of twentieth century cinema. His banter\u00a0is reminiscent of Grouch Marx, but while Groucho tended towards anarchy, Grant always stays in control.<\/p>\n

Despite her fantastic work here and in Auntie Mame<\/em> (1958), Rosalind Russell was primarily a character actress who seems to have faded from public consciousness.<\/p>\n

Howard Hawks was a chameleon director, capable of making films in virtually any genre: gangster<\/a>, western<\/a>, film noir<\/a>, screwball<\/a>, war epic<\/a>, and science fiction<\/a>. This versatility has ironically made it more difficult for critics to accurately asses his legacy.<\/p>\n

The second film adaptation of the\u00a0play<\/a> by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur introduced one radical departure from the original, turning Hildy into a woman.\u00a0 This brilliant alteration added a romantic\u00a0subtext to the relationship and makes\u00a0Walter’s obsession with Hildy seem slightly more reasonable.<\/p>\n

This film is one of the funniest and best of the screwball comedies<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\"Ball<\/p>\n

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Ball of Fire<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>(1941)<\/p>\n

A group of professors, including Bertram Potts (Gary Cooper) live together while working on a massive encyclopedia.\u00a0 When Potts goes on a fact-finding mission to\u00a0research current American slang, he meets nightclub singer “Sugarpuss” O’Shea (Barbara Stanwyck). The two of them fall in love, but their burgeoning relationship is complicated by O’Shea’s\u00a0involvement with a notorious gangster.<\/p>\n

Howard Hawks was one of the most adept at directing fast paced, frenetic comedies where the faster the dialogue, the better the film.<\/p>\n

At this point in his career,\u00a0Billy Wilder and\u00a0\u00a0frequent collaborator Charles Brackett\u00a0were stuck writing material for other directors to shepherd\u00a0to the screen.\u00a0Frustrated at this lack of control and determined to protect his artistic vision,\u00a0Wilder asked Hawks to allow him to observe the filming of this film and Hawks’s guidance\u00a0played a large\u00a0part in\u00a0Wilder becoming one of the most celebrated\u00a0directors of the twentieth century.<\/p>\n

Gary Cooper specialized in larger than life, better than perfect men such as Lou Gehrig<\/a>,\u00a0Sergeant York<\/a>, and Will Kane<\/a>\u00a0leading to his association with the “strong, silent type.” He was an underrated comic performer and his earnest, wide-eyed innocence is a perfect foil for the jaded worldliness of Sugarpusss.<\/p>\n

Barbara Stanwyck is\u00a0hysterical as Sugarpuss because she understands how to sell sexuality as a joke, when to exaggerate a line and when to reign it in. Mae West used humor to enhance her sexuality, and as a result her performances have a creepy sexual predator vibe, but Stanywyck uses sexuality to enhance the humor of her performance and this film benefits for it.<\/p>\n

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\"Casablanca<\/p>\n

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Casablanca<\/a><\/em>\u00a0(1942)<\/p>\n

In December 1941, American Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) is surprised to see his former lover Ilsa Lund\u00a0(Ingrid Bergman) arrive in his Moroccan caf\u00e9 with her husband, Victor Lazlo, a Czech Resistance leader. Rick and Ilsa had a brief, passionate affair in Paris after\u00a0the war<\/a> began. Assuming her husband had been killed in the conflict, Ilsa\u00a0intended to leave and start a new life with Rick, but abandoned those plans when\u00a0he\u00a0returned.\u00a0 Rick must make a choice, protect Lazlo and join the fight against the oppressive Nazi regime, or embrace the woman he loves and put his own desires above what he knows is right.<\/p>\n

Everyone remembers this as a big, romantic film, but there are a lot of really funny scenes: like when Captain Renault has a lucky night at the casino.<\/p>\n

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