Yearly Consensus 1940

[Spinal]

Submit your five favorite films and five favorite performances from this year and in a week I will give you a top ten in both categories. IMDb dates will be used.

The point system is as follows

1st Place-5 points
2nd Place-4 points
3rd Place-3.5 points
4th Place-3 points
5th Place-2.5 points

10.5 pts will be required to make either list.

There will be no restrictions on short films.

There will be no distinction made between male and female performances.
There will be no distinction made between lead and supporting performances.
Voice acting can be considered a performance.


I would like to be able to count votes as they come in. This means that if you change your vote, you need to make a new post. Please quote your old list and then add your new list so that I can easily track the changes. I will not be looking for edits. Once you make a post, consider your vote cast.

You may begin now.

ZJE-onnw2gM

[Adam]

1.The Shop Around the Corner
2. His Girl Friday
3. Rebecca
4. Night Train to Munich
5. Christmas in July

1. James Stewart, The Shop Around the Corner
2. Rosalind Russell, His Girl Friday
3. Margaret Sullivan, The Shop Around the Corner
4. Cary Grant, His Girl Friday
5. George Sanders, Rebecca

[Spinal]

1. His Girl Friday
2. The Grapes of Wrath
3. Pinocchio
4. Rebecca

1. Judith Anderson, Rebecca
2. Henry Fonda, The Grapes of Wrath
3. Cary Grant, His Girl Friday
4. Rosalind Russell, His Girl Friday
5. Laurence Olivier, Rebecca

[B-side]

1. The Great Dictator (Charlie Chaplin)
2. There's No Tomorrow (Max Ophüls)
3. The Grapes of Wrath (John Ford)
4. The Westerner (William Wyler)
5. Rebecca (Alfred Hitchcock)

1. Charlie Chaplin - The Great Dictator
2. Henry Fonda - The Grapes of Wrath
3. Walter Brennan - The Westerner
4. Edwige Feuillère - There's No Tomorrow
5. Joan Fontaine - Rebecca

[Spinal]

4 actors from Rebecca mentioned in the first 3 posts. :)

[B-side]

If I could, I'd like to put forth that The Westerner and There's No Tomorrow should be prioritized by those with the means to do so. The former was shot by Gregg Toland and features a brilliant performance by Brennan, and the latter is classic, tragic Ophüls.

[Pop Trash]

I'll sit this one out, but it is Walt Disney's finest year.

[Derek]

1. The Shop Around the Corner (Ernst Lubitsch)
2. Rebecca (Alfred Hitchcock)
3. Fantasia (Disney, various)
4. The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor)
5. Foreign Correspondent (Alfred Hitchcock)

HM: The Grapes of Wrath (John Ford), Pinocchio (Hamilton Luske & Ben Sharpsteen), The Bank Dick (Edward F. Cline), Christmas in July (Preston Sturges), The Great McGinty (Preston Sturges)

Performances:

1. James Stewart - The Shop Around the Corner
2. Joan Fontaine - Rebecca
3. Margaret Sullivan - The Shop Around the Corner
4. Cary Grant - The Philadelphia Story
5. Henry Fonda - The Grapes of Wrath

[soitgoes...]

The Philadelphia Story (Cukor)
The Grapes of Wrath (Ford)
The Westerner (Wyler)
His Girl Friday (Hawks)
Rebecca (Hitchcock)


HMs: The Mortal Storm, Pinocchio, The Shop Around the Corner and Fantasia

1. Henry Fonda, The Grapes of Wrath
2. James Stewart, The Shop Around the Corner
3. Joan Fontaine, Rebecca
4. Walter Brennan, The Westerner
5. Margaret Sullavan, The Mortal Storm

[Melville]

1. His Girl Friday
2. The Great Dictator
3. The Shop Around the Corner
4. The Grapes of Wrath
5. Rebecca

1. Cary Grant, His Girl Friday
2. Rosalind Russell, His Girl Friday
3. Charlie Chaplin, The Great Dictator
4. Jane Darwell, The Grapes of Wrath
5. Henry Fonda, The Grapes of Wrath

[Mysterious Dude]

1. Rebecca
2. His Girl Friday
3. The Great Dictator
4. The Grapes of Wrath
5. Fantasia

1. Rosalind Russell, His Girl Friday
2. Judith Anderson, Rebecca
3. Jane Darwell, The Grapes of Wrath
4. Henry Fonda, The Grapes of Wrath
5. Charlie Chaplin, The Great Dictator

Good movies this year, but it has been a long time since I've seen any of them.

[Raiders]

1. The Grapes of Wrath
2. The Mortal Storm
3. The Shop Around the Corner
4. Christmas in July
5. His Girl Friday

6. Fantasia
7. Rebecca
8. Pinocchio
9. The Philadelphia Story

Borzage will be sadly neglected by you philistines. The Stewart/Sullavan duo was dynamite this year.

Performances
1. Rosalind Russell, His Girl Friday
2. James Stewart, The Shop Around the Corner (to go with the consensus film)
3. Margaret Sullavan, The Mortal Storm (she's more memorable to me here)
4. Judith Anderson, Rebecca
5. Henry Fonda, The Grapes of Wrath

[baby doll]

Films:
1. The Shop Around the Corner (Ernst Lubitsch)
2. His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks)
3. The Great Dictator (Charles Chaplin)
4. Rebecca (Alfred Hitchcock)
5. The Bank Dick (Edward Cline)

Performances:
1. Rosalind Russell, His Girl Friday
2. Charles Chaplin, The Great Dictator
3. Cary Grant, His Girl Friday
4. W.C. Fields, The Bank Dick
5. Jimmy Stewart, The Shop Around the Corner

[Robby P]

His Girl Friday
The Shop Around the Corner
Rebecca
Foreign Corespondent
Fantasia

[dreamdead]

As I don't do film downloads, is there any other way to see The Mortal Storm? I've wanted to see it for over a decade, but the recent Borzage set doesn't include it and I'm at a loss...

[Raiders]

As I don't do film downloads, is there any other way to see The Mortal Storm? I've wanted to see it for over a decade, but the recent Borzage set doesn't include it and I'm at a loss...

Not sure why it isn't on Netflix. It is on DVD: Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/The-Mortal-Storm-Margaret-Sullavan/dp/B003552QWC)

EDIT: Hm, this is not really an official DVD release. It is a DVD-R copy being distributed by I-don't-know-who.

[Weeping_Guitar]

1. His Girl Friday
2. The Shop Around the Corner
3. The Philadelphia Story
4. Christmas in July
5. Rebecca

------------------

1. Rosalind Russell (His Girl Friday)
2. Cary Grant (His Girl Friday)
3. Margaret Sullivan (The Shop Around the Corner)
4. Katharine Hepburn (The Philadelphia Story)
5. George Sanders (Rebecca)

[Russ]

1. His Girl Friday
2. The Philadelphia Story
3. Fantasia
4. The Bank Dick
5. Pinocchio

1. Rosalind Russell, His Girl Friday
2. W.C. Field, The Bank Dick
3. Cary Grant, His Girl Friday
4. Peter Lorre, Stranger on the Third Floor
5. Katherine Hepburn, The Philadelphia Story

[Thirdmango]

I might have time to watch more movies in order to revise this list, but in case I don't this is my ballot.

1. The Great Dictator
2. Fantasia
3. Pinocchio

[EyesWideOpen]

Not sure why it isn't on Netflix. It is on DVD: Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/The-Mortal-Storm-Margaret-Sullavan/dp/B003552QWC)

EDIT: Hm, this is not really an official DVD release. It is a DVD-R copy being distributed by I-don't-know-who.

It's distributed by Warner Bros Archives. Almost all the major studios now have made to order archive collections of hard to find stuff that they sell on their websites or through amazon.

[Lazlo]

1. The Philadelphia Story
2. Rebecca
3. The Grapes of Wrath
4. Foreign Correspondent
5. Fantasia

1. Katharine Hepburn - The Philadelphia Story
2. Henry Fonda - The Grapes of Wrath
3. James Stewart - The Philadelphia Story
4. Joan Fontaine - Rebecca
5. Charles Chaplin - The Great Dictator

[Yxklyx]

1. His Girl Friday
2. Fantasia
3. The Grapes of Wrath
4. Christmas in July
5. Black Friday

1. Rosalind Russell (His Girl Friday)
2. Stanley Ridges (Black Friday)
3. Henry Fonda (The Grapes of Wrath)
4. James Stewart (The Shop Around the Corner)
5. Margaret Sullavan (The Shop Around the Corner)

[dreamdead]

1. The Shop Around the Corner
2. The Grapes of Wrath
3. Fantasia
4. The Philadelphia Story
5. His Girl Friday

HN: The Bank Dick or The Mortal Storm

Performances:

1. James Stewart (The Shop Around the Corner)
2. Margaret Sullavan (The Shop Around the Corner)
3. Henry Fonda (Grapes of Wrath)
4. Rosalind Russell (His Girl Friday)
5. Jane Darwell (The Grapes of Wrath)

[Spinal]

Would like to see a few more ballots here, if possible.

[Dead & Messed Up]

Dammit! This snuck up on me. I wanted to watch His Girl Friday before I committed to a list, but I'll heed the Spinal-call.

1. Fantasia
2. The Thief of Bagdad
3. The Sea Hawk
4. Rebecca
5. The Philadelphia Story

1. Judith Anderson, Rebecca
2. Sabu, The Thief of Bagdad
3. Katharine Hepburn, The Philadelphia Story
4. James Stewart, The Philadelphia Story
5. Errol Flynn, The Sea Hawk

[Bluebeard]

1. His Girl Friday
2. Rebecca
3. The Shop Around the Corner
4. Kitty Foyle
5. Fantasia

1. Gene Lockhart (His Girl Friday)
2. Anton Walbrook (Gaslight)
3. Barbara Stanwyck (Remember the Night)
4. Ginger Rogers (Kitty Foyle)
5. George Sanders (Rebecca)

[elixir]

1. The Shop Around the Corner
2. Christmas in July
3. The Philadelphia Story
4. His Girl Friday
5. Rebecca

1. James Stewart, The Shop Around the Corner
2. Margaret Sullavan, The Shop Around the Corner
3. Katharine Hepburn, The Philadelphia Story
4. Rosalind Russell, His Girl Friday
5. Joan Fontaine, Rebecca

[Spinal]

OK, working on this now.

[Spinal]

Favorite Performances of 1940

#9

I wish I were a woman of 36, dressed in black satin with a string of pearls!

Joan Fontaine, Rebecca


rsUJB34C-Pw

Did you know?

She and her elder sister Olivia de Havilland are two of the last surviving leading ladies from Hollywood of the 1930s. Joan is 94. Olivia is 96.

[Spinal]

Favorite Performances of 1940

#8

Go ahead. Jump. He never loved you, so why go on living? Jump and it will all be over...

Judith Anderson, Rebecca


13Be_qo3Wxo

Did you know?

Anderson won two Emmy Awards and a Tony Award and was also nominated for a Grammy Award and an Academy Award.

[Spinal]

Favorite Performances of 1940

#6 (tie)

Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men - machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines, you are not cattle, you are men!

Charles Chaplin, The Great Dictator


IJOuoyoMhj8

Did you know?

Adolf Hitler considered Charles Chaplin to be one of the greatest actors he had ever seen.

[Spinal]

Favorite Performances of 1940

#6 (tie)

You haven't switched from liquor to dope, by any chance, have you Dexter?

Katherine Hepburn, The Philadelphia Story


ukZDbYWVybs

Did you know?

According to Moviefone.com, famed porn actress, Nora Louise Kuzma (aka Traci Lords), adapted the name of Hepburn's character for her own use.

[Spinal]

Favorite Performances of 1940

#5

Well I really wouldn't care to scratch your surface, Mr. Kralik, because I know exactly what I'd find. Instead of a heart, a hand-bag. Instead of a soul, a suitcase. And instead of an intellect, a cigarette lighter... which doesn't work.

Margaret Sullavan, The Shop Around the Corner


A3lXWjinMOw

Did you know?

When Sullavan divorced William Wyler in 1936 and married Leland Hayward that same year, they moved to a colonial house just a block down from James Stewart. Naturally, there were numerous rumors about their supposed romantic involvement.

[Spinal]

Favorite Performances of 1940

#4

Listen, you insignificant, square-toed, pimpled-headed spy.

Cary Grant, His Girl Friday


IgfhbHw6gXY

Did you know?

A few of Grant's comedic ad-libs were left in the final film. For example, when his character is arrested for a kidnapping, he describes the horrendous fate suffered by the last person who crossed him: Archie Leach (Grant's real name).

[Spinal]

Favorite Performances of 1940

#3

There might be a lot we don't know about each other. You know, people seldom go to the trouble of scratching the surface of things to find the inner truth.

James Stewart, The Shop Around the Corner


z-DQbkCHDmk

Did you know?

Stewart won an Academy Award for his work this year. But it wasn't for this film. It was for The Philadelphia Story.

[Spinal]

Favorite Performances of 1940

#2

Seems like the government's got more interest in a dead man than a live one.

Henry Fonda, The Grapes of Wrath


5ayi81QMuak

Did you know?

Henry Fonda tried to avoid being a contract player for 20th Century-Fox because he wanted the ability to independently choose his own projects. But when the much-coveted part of Tom Joad was offered to him, Fonda hesitantly gave in and signed a contract to work with the studio for seven years because he knew it would be the role of a lifetime.

[Spinal]

Favorite Performances of 1940

#1

If I ever lay my two eyes on you again, I'm gonna walk right up to you and hammer on that monkeyed skull of yours 'til it rings like a Chinese gong!

Rosalind Russell, His Girl Friday


uqw_8PrUrC8

Did you know?

In her autobiography, Life Is A Banquet, Russell wrote that she thought her role did not have as many good lines as Grant's, so she hired her own writer to 'punch up' her dialogue.

[Spinal]

Favorite Performances of 1940

1. Rosalind Russell, His Girl Friday (47)
2. Henry Fonda, The Grapes of Wrath (34.5)
3. James Stewart, The Shop Around the Corner (33.5)
4. Cary Grant, His Girl Friday (22.5)
5. Margaret Sullavan, The Shop Around the Corner (21)
6t. Charlie Chaplin, The Great Dictator (17.5)
6t. Katherine Hepburn, The Philadelphia Story (17.5)
8. Judith Anderson, Rebecca (17)
9. Joan Fontaine, Rebecca (15.5)

Not quite:
Jane Darwell, The Grapes of Wrath (9)

[Spinal]

Favorite Films of 1940

#8


http://img109.imageshack.us/img109/1066/christmasinjuly.jpg

Christmas in July

Director: Preston Sturges

Country: USA

An office clerk loves entering contests in the hopes of someday winning a fortune and marrying the girl he loves. As a joke, some of his co-workers put together a fake telegram which says that he won a $25,000 prize. When the truth comes out, he's not prepared for the consequences.

Sturges helped invent the gadget sofa demonstrated in the department store scene. The film was was marketed with the tagline: If you can't sleep at night, it isn't the coffee - it's the bunk!

"A very barbed account of the American Dream as something between a shopping-spree bacchanalia and an uprising of tossed fruit, seemingly as cozy as The Gift of the Magi yet in reality more stinging than Revolutionary Road." -- Fernando F. Croce

[Spinal]

Favorite Films of 1940

#7


http://img685.imageshack.us/img685/5172/sjff03img1003.jpg

The Great Dictator

Director: Charles Chaplin

Country: USA

Dictator Adenoid Hynkel has a doppelganger, a poor but kind Jewish barber living in the slums, who one day is mistaken for Hynkel.

Chaplin said wearing Hynkel's costume made him feel more aggressive, and those close to him remember him being more difficult to work with on days he was shooting as Hynkel. Douglas Fairbanks visited the set of the film in 1939, and laughed almost uncontrollably at the scene that was being played. He was dead within a week and it was the last time Chaplin would see him.

"If we're a trifle inured to Nazi jokes by now, Chaplin's high-spirited mockery shouldn't be taken for granted: Production began in 1937, before even the annexation of Austria, and when it was finally released—ripping Hitler every which way and derisively airing the matters of concentration camps, mass slaughter, and 'MARVelous poison gas!'—the U.S. was still neutral. As an individual political act, it marched alone in Golden Age Hollywood." -- Michael Atkinson

[Spinal]

Favorite Films of 1940

#6


http://img826.imageshack.us/img826/5656/philadelphiastoryaltar.jpg

The Philadelphia Story

Director: George Cukor

Country: USA

When a rich woman's ex-husband and a tabloid-type reporter turn up just before her planned remarriage, she begins to learn the truth about herself.

Katharine Hepburn starred in the Broadway production of the play on which this film was based and owned the film rights to the material; they were purchased for her by billionaire Howard Hughes, then given to her as a gift. James Stewart never felt he deserved the Best Actor Oscar for his performance in this film, always maintaining that Henry Fonda should have won instead for The Grapes of Wrath.

"I don't think The Philadelphia Story would have worked nearly so perfectly without [Cary] Grant, who was ignored at that year's Academy Awards because his character's struggles are largely internal. Add Hepburn's persona, beautifully explored here in all its wonder, and Stewart's likeability, and George Cukor's sensible, subtle, and lovingly unrushed direction of a firecracker script … the result is a studio picture far deeper and richer than its whimsical surface style might lead you to believe." -- Jeremiah Kipp

[Spinal]

Favorite Films of 1940

#4 (tie)


http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/4229/fantasiawallpaperclassi.jpg

Fantasia

Director: Samuel Armstrong, James Algar, Bill Roberts, Paul Satterfield, Ben Sharpsteen, David D. Hand, Hamilton Luske, Jim Handley, Ford Beebe, T. Hee, Norm Ferguson and Wilfred Jackson

Country: USA

Disney animators set pictures to Western classical music as Leopold Stokowski conducts the Philadelphia Orchestra.

During production, the animators were given no instructions for coloring. Walt Disney instructed them to use any colors they wanted, a first. Bill Tytla, the artist responsible for creating Chernabog, also created Sugar Bear, who was used to promote Post Cereal's Super Sugar Crisp.

"Fantasia is ... one of the few Disney movies whose outsized aims marinate tastefully in memory instead of festering, and if it continues to introduce children to Stravinsky's 3/16 by 5/16 time signatures, the original music Allan Sherman sang along to in 'Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah', and the glory of split-second tit shots from Bald Mountain's hellish spectral banshees in flight, then it's unquestionably among Disney's masterpieces." -- Eric Henderson

[Spinal]

Favorite Films of 1940

#4 (tie)


http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/6203/grapesofwrath.jpg

The Grapes of Wrath

Director: John Ford

Country: USA

A poor Midwest family is forced off of their land. They travel to California, suffering the misfortunes of the homeless in the Great Depression.

Ford banned all makeup and perfume from the set on the grounds that it was not in keeping with the tone of the picture. Non-US audiences saw the film with a prologue which explained about the effects of the Depression and the Oklahoma Dust Bowl.

"John Ford's The Grapes of Wrath is a left-wing parable, directed by a right-wing American director, about how a sharecropper's son, a barroom brawler, is converted into a union organizer. The message is boldly displayed, but told with characters of such sympathy and images of such beauty that audiences leave the theater feeling more pity than anger or resolve. It's a message movie, but not a recruiting poster." -- Roger Ebert

[Spinal]

Favorite Films of 1940

#3


http://img163.imageshack.us/img163/8663/xmas2bdinner.jpg

The Shop Around the Corner

Director: Ernst Lubitsch

Country: USA

Two employees at a gift shop can barely stand one another, without realizing that they're falling in love through the post as each other's anonymous pen pal.

To make sure his film was stripped of the glamor usually associated with him, Lubitsch went to such lengths as ordering that a dress Margaret Sullavan had purchased off the rack for $1.98 be left in the sun to bleach and altered to fit poorly. The film's plot inspired the films In the Good Old Summertime and You've Got Mail, as well as the Broadway musical, She Loves Me.

"I think I never was as good as in Shop Around the Corner. Never did I make a picture in which the atmosphere and the characters were truer than in this picture." -- Ernst Lubitsch

[Spinal]

Favorite Films of 1940

#2


http://img717.imageshack.us/img717/3263/rebecca2b1.jpg

Rebecca

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Country: USA

When a naive young woman marries a rich widower and settles in his gigantic mansion, she finds the memory of the first wife maintaining a grip on her husband and the servants.

The first film Alfred Hitchcock made in Hollywood and the only one that won a Best Picture Oscar. Mrs. Danvers is hardly ever seen walking; she seems to glide. Hitchcock wanted her to be seen solely from Joan Fontaine's character's anxious point of view.

"Before getting into a review of Rebecca, we must say a word about the old empire spirit. Hitch has it—Alfred Hitchcock that is, the English master of movie melodramas, rounder than John Bull, twice as fond of beef ... The question being batted around by the cineastes ... was whether his peculiarly British, yet peculiarly personal, style could survive Hollywood, the David O. Selznick of Gone with the Wind, the tropio palms, the minimum requirements of the Screen Writers Guild and the fact that a good steak is hard to come by in Hollywood. But depend on the native Britisher's empire spirit, the policy of doing in Rome not what the Romans do, but what the Romans jolly well ought to be civilized into doing." -- Frank S. Nugent (1940)

[Spinal]

Favorite Films of 1940

#1


http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/7645/friday2v.jpg

His Girl Friday

Director: Howard Hawks

Country: USA

A newspaper editor uses every trick in the book to keep his ace reporter ex-wife from remarrying.

One of the first, if not the first, films to have characters talk over the lines of other characters, for a more realistic sound. In the play the film was based on (The Front Page), the part of Hildy was played by a man. While auditioning actors, a secretary would read the lines belonging to Hildy. Hawks loved the words coming from a woman so much, they decided to rewrite the part for a woman.

"It takes you by the scruff of the neck in the first reel and it shakes you madly ... Before it's over you don't know whether you have been laughing or having your ears boxed." -- Frank S. Nugent (1940)

[Spinal]

Favorite Films of 1940

1. His Girl Friday (58)
2. Rebecca (45.5)
3. The Shop Around the Corner (43.5)
4t. The Grapes of Wrath (33.5)
4t. Fantasia (33.5)
6. The Philadelphia Story (29.5)
7. The Great Dictator (21)
8. Christmas in July (15.5)

Not quite:
Pinocchio (9.5)
Foreign Correspondent (8.5)

2008 Poll:
1. His Girl Friday (103)
2. Rebecca (77)
3. The Philadelphia Story (61)
4. Pinocchio (46)
5. The Shop Around the Corner (45)
6. The Grapes of Wrath (43.5)
7. Fantasia (39.5)
8. The Great Dictator (27.5)
9. Christmas in July (19.5)
10. Foreign Correspondent (19)

[Mysterious Dude]

I believe this is the first time a girl has gotten the top spot on the actors' list.

[baby doll]

I believe this is the first time a girl has gotten the top spot on the actors' list.And for most of the movie, her character is essentially "one of the boys." (In Notre musique, Godard jokingly claims Ã* propops His Girl Friday that Hawks couldn't tell the difference between men and women.)

[soitgoes...]

I wonder if there will be another year that has all American films.

[baby doll]

I wonder if there will be another year that has all American films.1941 and 1942.

[soitgoes...]

1941 and 1942.

Probably. Stupid war.