The Best Movies: 1946

The 10 Best Movies of 1946

1. It’s a Wonderful Life. Directed by Frank Capra. James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore. While not the best movie ever made, this could well be the most popular film of all time. Few people could make movies as sentimental as Capra and this one is as sentimental as it gets. Capra is aided immensely by the performances of Reed and Barrymore, but, make no mistake about it, this movie works because of Capra’s direction and the magnificent, completely believable, performance from Stewart. A Christmas gift that keeps on giving.

2. The Best Years of Our Lives. Directed by William Wyler. Myrna Loy, Fredric March, Dana Andrews, Teresa Wright, Virginia Mayo. Producer Sam Goldwyn got the idea for this movie by reading an article in Life magazine about the difficulties World War II servicemen had assimilating back into civilian life. The script, direction, acting and photography are all superb and have contributed into making this an American classic. Goldwyn, who became known for his malapropisms, reportedly said of this film, “I don't care if it doesn't make a nickel, I just want every man, woman and child in America to see it.”

3. Great Expectations. Directed by David Lean. John Mills, Valerie Hobson. This is my personal favorite translation of Charles Dickens into film. I know, Dickens purists often argue that the film left out too many characters from the novel, but I challenge them to come up with a film any more reverential to Dickens’s tone and sense of time and place.

4. A Matter of Life and Death. Directed by Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger. David Niven, Kim Hunter, Raymond Massey. The British Ministry of Information asked Powell and Pressuburger to make a film promoting British-U.S. relations and this masterful blending of reality (the scenes in color) and fantasy (those shot in black and white) is the result. Interestingly, the British rejected it as anti-British. U.S. audiences, however, embraced it. Also known as Stairway to Heaven and, indeed, one of the highlights of this wonderful film is a stairway that seems to go on forever.

5. The Seventh Veil. Directed by Compton Bennett. James Mason, Ann Todd. Judging from this film, a rather simplistic yet effective examination of mental illness, Todd never received the recognition as an accomplished actress that she deserved. She is absolutely mesmerizing here. The film was shot quickly on a small budget and an incomplete version was shown to preview audiences so they could decide how the movie should end. Then the ending the audiences preferred was shot. This is another film that needs to be released on a Region 1 DVD.

6. The Big Sleep. Directed by Howard Hawks. Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall. My favorite detective film of all time, one of the great examples of film noir and one of the films I always cite when people want to argue plot is critical to a film’s success. The plot of this film is so convoluted even its author refuses to explain it. When Hawks tried to figure out who committed one of the murders in the story, he called author Raymond Chandler, who told Hawks “How should I know? You figure it out.” The screen chemistry between Bogart and Bacall is heightened by some of the most sexually charged dialogue of any film of this era.

7. The Postman Always Rings Twice. Directed by Tay Garnett. Lana Turner, John Garfield. Turner’s femme is this film is almost as fatale as was Barbara Stanwyck’s in Double Indemnity, another great film adapted from a James M. Cain novel, two years before. What puts Turner is second place is the fact that her seductress is too vulnerable, never completely selling out the man she seduces into doing her dirty work. Notice the fact that in all but two scenes, a funeral and a scene in which she thinks about suicide, Turner is completely clad in white.

8. My Darling Clementine. Directed by John Ford. Henry Fonda, Linda Darnell, Victor Mature. My favorite film dealing with the Wyatt Earp/Doc Holliday/Gunfight at the OK Corral legend, a brilliantly orchestrated movie from the master Ford. There are a slew of wonderful scenes in this film but my favorite is the one in which Wyatt and Clementine walk to a church dance as though they were walking down a wedding aisle. Some wonder why the film refers to a character who seems to have comparatively little screen time. I have always felt Clementine was Ford’s representation of big city eastern mores encroaching on his beloved western frontier.

9. Green for Danger. Directed by Sidney Gilliat. Alastair Sim, Sally Gray, Trevor Howard. An overlooked and under-appreciated British masterpiece with Sim perfectly cast as a detective investigating a double murder in a World War II hospital. If you want to know what is meant by the term, “droll British humor,” this is the film to see. It’s also pretty suspenseful.

10. Notorious. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains. How Hitchcock ever got away with this movie I’ll never know. Think about it: Grant, an untrustworthy and unsympathetic government agent, bribes the woman he loves, a sexually agressive alcoholic Bergman, to prostitute herself for the sake of the red, white and blue. Here’s another film where the plot is of absolutely no importance — it has something to do with uranium — and style is everything. There has never — ever — been a better kissing scene than the one in this film. But Hitchcock’s finest moment comes in the magnificent “key” scene.