……………………………………………………….

Ranking 1940 Best Picture Nominees

1940 was a pretty amazing year for cinema, full of classics that still enchant audiences. The Academy’s picks for this year were mostly quite good with a couple of questionable choices, but most of the biggest films of the year got their nods. The winner remains rather idiosyncratic for Best Picture while the slate overall is quite diverse with movies ranging from romantic comedies to dramas to mysteries and noir features. It’s a very good slate, but it would have been terrific had they nominated my honorable mentions.

My Ranking of the Nominees:

10. Our Town

The last spot was very easy to decide from this slate, and that goes to this awfully dated slice-of-life tale that has stood the test of time so badly. The performances are definitely quite good and there are some charming moments here and there, but Our Town is so stagey and so problematically framed with those annoying narrations that it really becomes a frustratingly annoying viewing experience. It also has a very thin script and weak characterization. It had no business being nominated in a year that was as terrific as this one.

9. The Long Voyage Home

While The Long Voyage Home is somewhat important as the first Hollywood movie to be at least set during World War II, it is otherwise entirely unimportant when it comes to its merits. The cinematography is quite superb in the strangely unique ways some shots are framed and the movie is charming in characters and endearing, but the plot is very thin, the movie’s pacing is incredibly slow and most of it was just too forgettable and boring to watch. It needed a character or actor to elevate it, but none unfortunately did.

8. Kitty Foyle

A hard-working, white-collar girl from a middle-class family meets and falls in love with a young socialite, but she soon clashes with his family. A predictable Cinderella-type story, this was obviously a very feminist movie for its time, but nowadays its impact is somewhat blunted. It is remembered most for getting Ginger Rogers her Oscar, which is considered troublesome nowadays, but her work here is definitely the best thing about this movie. She’s very charming and likable. The flashback structure is also great, but the plot itself was too predictable.

7. Foreign Correspondent

Foreign Correspondent looks amazing with absolutely spectacular cinematography, just brilliant and unforgettable set design and great effects, but it is ultimately just a solid movie which is not what you’d come to expect from The Master of Suspense. The script is problematic, the film is overly convoluted, the pacing is all over the place and the characters are forgettable. It is one of Hitchcock’s weakest 1940s efforts. With that being said, the fact that he was nominated twice for Best Picture in this year alone makes 1940 a big, strange anomaly for the director.

6. The Philadelphia Story

The Philadelphia Story is one of those renowned classics that I personally never gravitated towards. While I do find all three of its iconic actors quite charming and some scenes very amusing, most of the movie plays out as only a solid, but slight tale of remarriage with the highest sophistication in dialogue and humor usually found in this time period for this genre being surprisingly absent here. Grant and Hepburn are very strong, but Stewart is just solid, thus his Oscar win this year remains highly problematic to this day.

5. All This, and Heaven Too

It’s a lesser-known fact that Bette Davis was actually just as capable at playing good-hearted, innocent heroines as her more famous bitchy personas. Case in point, All This, and Heaven Too. She’s terrific throughout this entire melodrama while Charles Boyer himself was perfectly cast. This movie was definitely too long for what is a very simple story at its core, but the juiciness of it all really worked and is enjoyable to this day. Most wouldn’t put this one as high, but in my opinion it is quite underrated, so it gets the fifth spot from me.

4. The Grapes of Wrath

This will undoubtedly prove to be a controversially low placement, but that is what happens when you read a classic book before watching what is undoubtedly going to be a disappointing film adaptation. Yes, John Ford’s Oscar-winning direction is remarkable. And yes, Jane Darwell and Henry Fonda are incredible here. It also looks superb due to its very artistic cinematography. Still though, the runtime is ridiculously short, the pacing is rushed and there were so many important plot points from the novel that were cut here, leading to a major letdown for me personally.

3. The Letter

A woman has killed a man and she must prove that it was in self-defense. This is the premise behind this Bette Davis vehicle (the second of the two BP nominees this year starring her) that is very problematic in script with a rather troublesome twist. But other than that, the movie looks and sounds wonderful, its noir thrills are very satisfactory and the acting is excellent across the board. The Letter is pretty good, but just not as amazing as you would expect from the caliber of everybody involved in this project.

2. Rebecca

Rebecca is a thoroughly delightful Gothic mystery that isn’t among the absolute masterpieces of Hitchcock, but it comes pretty close, and it was quite interesting that this was the only Best Picture winner directed by him. The storyline is intricately crafted and consistently intriguing while the villain is super creepy and unforgettable. The real highlight here, though, lies in the technical areas. The acting is terrific, the direction is marvelous and the black-and-white cinematography is absolutely stunning. Rebecca’s an atmospheric treat, that’s for sure.

1. The Great Dictator

The best movie of 1940 wasn’t even nominated, but the second best film and the one that should have won is The Great Dictator, an immortal Charlie Chaplin classic that is probably his career-best work. This is the film where the stars aligned perfectly to create a masterpiece of both hilarious, timeless comedy and heartwarming, inspirational drama. It’s a political satire that just might be one of the most important movies ever produced by Hollywood due to its beautiful anti-war speech at the end. Chaplin here operated tremendously well on all fronts, so him losing both BP and Best Actor still hurts to this day.

Films That Should Have Been Nominated:

Pinocchio – I know that the Academy is animation-averse. I know that. But the fact that they couldn’t even nominate the best animated film of all time for Best Picture still hurts. Brutal, touching, artistic and genuinely perfect in all elements, Pinocchio remains Disney’s darkest and greatest animated picture of all time.

The Mortal Storm – The Mortal Storm is a perfectly timely World War II drama that fools you into thinking it’s going to be a joyous movie, but then it pulls the rug beneath your feet and reveals itself as a very moving tragedy. It also features an infinitely better James Stewart performance than the Oscar-winning one.

The Thief of Bagdad – Everything that I have said for Pinocchio also applies here. Yes, they nominated ‘The Wizard of Oz’ the year before, but the Academy mostly disregards fantasies, and this was particularly problematic in this instance as The Thief of Bagdad is absolutely wonderful, incredibly appealing visually and a downright magical rendition of this story.