mightysparks's Favourite Films of the 1940s

Pulp novelist Holly Martins travels to shadowy, postwar Vienna, only to find himself investigating the mysterious death of an old friend, Harry Lime.

An angel is sent from Heaven to help a desperately frustrated businessman by showing him what life would have been like if he had never existed.

The theatrical life of a beautiful courtesan in 1830s Paris and the four men who love her.

A French village doctor becomes the target of poison-pen letters sent to village leaders, accusing him of affairs and practicing abortion.

A butler working in a foreign embassy in London falls under suspicion when his wife accidentally falls to her death, the only witness being an impressionable young boy.

In Paris in 1887, Irène works as a governess to Douce, the grand-daughter of the dowager Countess de Bonafé. Douce believes she is in love with Fabien, the handsome manager of the estate. However she cannot hope to marry him because of their class difference. Douce's widowed father, the Count de Bonafé, has a wooden leg, and is infatuated with Irène. Douce discovers that Fabien is planning to flee to Quebec with Irène, and also finds out that the Count has asked Irène to marry him. So Douce tells Fabien this and convinces him to run away with her, causing consternation in the family.

Two men try to convince themselves they've committed the perfect murder by hosting a dinner party after strangling a former classmate to death.

During the German occupation of Poland, an acting troupe becomes embroiled in a Polish soldier's efforts to track down a German spy.

A pianist about to flee from a duel receives a letter from a woman he cannot remember, who may hold the key to his downfall.

Two barge skippers fall in love with the same woman.

A family man travelling for work, Paolo Bianchi, meets on a train a lonely girl, Maria. He sees her again on a bus and she reveals him that she's in troubles: she's pregnant, her baby's father has left her and she doesn't know how to tell to her parents that she's not married. She asks Paolo to play the role of her husband and he accepts....

A cynical expatriate American cafe owner struggles to decide whether or not to help his former lover and her fugitive husband escape the Nazis in French Morocco.

In 1900, a young widow finds her seaside cottage is haunted and forms a unique relationship with the ghost.

A suave but cynical man supports his family by marrying and murdering rich women for their money, but the job has some occupational hazards.

Three World War II veterans, two of them traumatized or disabled, return home to the American midwest to discover that they and their families have been irreparably changed.

Meeting a stranger in a railway station, a woman is tempted to cheat on her husband.

Fascinated by gorgeous Mrs. Bannister, seaman Michael O'Hara joins a bizarre yachting cruise, and ends up mired in a complex murder plot.

During the 1942 North African campaign, a British straggler manages to pass himself off as a waiter at the hotel commandeered as Rommel's headquarters. He has thoughts of assassinating Rommel but his cover may have an even better use.

A frustrated city girl disguises herself as a youngster in order to get a cheaper train ticket home. But little "Sue Sue" finds herself in a whole heap of grown-up trouble when she hides out in a compartment with a handsome Major.

A teenage girl, overjoyed when her uncle comes to visit the family in their quiet California town, slowly begins to suspect that he is the "Merry Widow" killer sought by the authorities.

A young ballet dancer is torn between the man she loves and her pursuit to become a prima ballerina.

A self-conscious woman juggles adjusting to her new role as an aristocrat's wife and avoiding being intimidated by his first wife's spectral presence.

Several survivors of a torpedoed merchant ship in World War II find themselves in the same lifeboat with one of the crew members of the U-boat that sank their ship.

Several people try to talk 27-year-old Noriko into marrying, but all she wants is to keep on caring for her widowed father.

A writer falls in love with a young socialite and they're soon married, but her obsessive love for him threatens to be the undoing of them both as well as everyone around them.