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MCMXXXIX Redux

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It’s over? It’s over!

So, after doing a blog series where I watched one movie per year for a century (1919-2018, I think), I then did a blog series for every month in a decade (the 40s), and this one was one movie per week in a year (1939).

You may be noticing a pattern in the methodology here.

So… how was 1939?

Googling for “the greatest year ever for movies”, 1939 often comes up. And it was indeed a good year — perhaps because the grim reality of the 30s was finally letting up some, and the grim reality of 1940 hadn’t yet set in.

Looking over the list of movies, it’s… pretty spiffy? It was a fun project — I got to see a bunch of movies I wouldn’t otherwise have chosen to see.

I wondered whether there was going to be an obvious seasonal difference to the movies (as I watched them chronologically, one per release week in the US). And, yes, there were more blockbusters in the summer and before Xmas, but otherwise not a lot.

The impending war with Nazi Germany was not mentioned a lot: A handful of movies, at most, even alluded to the war. I was surprised at how noir some of the film noirs were — those movies became very scarce indeed when the war started.

So… there you go.

Oh, yeah:

I got the colour palette from… somewhere on the interwebs. It’s nice, isn’t it? I googled for “colours 1939”, except not in English.

I King of the Underworld. Lewis Seiler
II Son of Frankenstein. Rowland V. Lee
III They Made Me A Criminal. Busby Berkeley
IV Idiot’s Delight. Clarence Brown
V Honolulu. Edward Buzzell
VI Made For Each Other. John Cromwell
VII Nancy Drew… Reporter
VIII Wife, Husband and Friend. Gregory Ratoff
IX Oklahoma Kid. Lloyd Bacon
X The Little Princess. Walter Lang, William A. Seiter
XI Midnight. Mitchell Leisen
XII You Can’t Get Away With Murder. Lewis Seiler
XIII The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle. H.C. Potter
XIV East Side of Heaven. David Butler
XV Never Say Die. Elliott Nugent
XVI Dark Victory. Edmund Goulding
XVII Union Pacific. Cecil B. DeMille
XVIII Rose of Washington Square. Gregory Ratoff
XIX Jamaica Inn. Alfred Hitchcock
XX Goodbye Mr. Chips. Sidney Franklin & Sam Wood
XXI The Gorilla. Allan Dwan
XXII Charlie Chan in Reno. Norman Foster
XXIII Daybreak. Marcel Carné
XXIV Fric-Frac. Claude Autant-Lara & Maurice Lehmann
XXV Five Came Back. John Farrow
XXVI Bachelor Mother. Garson Kanin
XXVII On Borrowed Time. Harold S. Bucquet
XXVIII Bulldog Drummond’s Bride. James P. Hogan
XXIX Each Dawn I Die. William Keighley
XXX Beau Geste. William A. Wellman
XXXI In Name Only. John Cromwell
XXXII The Wizard of Oz. Victor Fleming
XXXIV Fifth Avenue Girl. Gregory La Cava
XXXV The Women. George Cukor
XXXVI Blackmail 1939. H.C. Potter
XXXVII Babes in Arms. Busby Berkeley
XXXVIII Espionage Agent. Lloyd Bacon
XXXIX The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex. Michael Curtiz
XL Ninotchka. Ernst Lubitsch
XLI Zangiku monogatari. Kenji Mizoguchi
XLII Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Frank Capra
XLIII The Roaring Twenties. Raoul Walsh
XLIV Drums Along the Mohawk. John Ford
XLV Allegheny Uprising. William A. Seiter
XLVI Tower of London. Rowland V. Lee
XLVII Day-Time Wife. Gregory Ratoff
XLVIII Destry Rides Again. George Marshall
XLIX The Devil’s Daughter. Arthur H. Leonard
L Gone With The Wind. George Cukor, Victor Fleming, Sam Wood
LI Gulliver’s Travels. Dave Fleischer
LII Invisible Stripes. Lloyd Bacon
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