Best movies of 30's

by mathieubreuillon | created - 08 Sep 2013 | updated - 06 Oct 2016 | Public
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1. Der blaue Engel (1930)

Passed | 104 min | Drama, Music, Romance

90 Metascore

An elderly professor's ordered life spins dangerously out of control when he falls for a nightclub singer.

Director: Josef von Sternberg | Stars: Emil Jannings, Marlene Dietrich, Kurt Gerron, Rosa Valetti

Votes: 16,303 | Gross: $0.08M

2. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931)

Passed | 98 min | Horror, Sci-Fi

Dr. Jekyll faces horrible consequences when he lets his dark side run wild with a potion that transforms him into the animalistic Mr. Hyde.

Director: Rouben Mamoulian | Stars: Fredric March, Miriam Hopkins, Rose Hobart, Holmes Herbert

Votes: 15,813 | Gross: $2.79M

3. Frankenstein (1931)

Passed | 70 min | Drama, Horror, Sci-Fi

91 Metascore

Dr Henry Frankenstein is obsessed with assembling a living being from parts of several exhumed corpses.

Director: James Whale | Stars: Colin Clive, Mae Clarke, Boris Karloff, John Boles

Votes: 79,738

4. The Public Enemy (1931)

Passed | 83 min | Crime, Drama

80 Metascore

An Irish-American street punk tries to make it big in the world of organized crime.

Director: William A. Wellman | Stars: James Cagney, Jean Harlow, Edward Woods, Joan Blondell

Votes: 23,027 | Gross: $1.01M

5. M (1931)

Passed | 99 min | Crime, Mystery, Thriller

When the police in a German city are unable to catch a child-murderer, other criminals join in the manhunt.

Director: Fritz Lang | Stars: Peter Lorre, Ellen Widmann, Inge Landgut, Otto Wernicke

Votes: 168,526 | Gross: $0.03M

6. Love Me Tonight (1932)

Passed | 104 min | Comedy, Musical, Romance

A Parisian tailor finds himself posing as a baron in order to collect a sizeable bill from an aristocrat, only to fall in love with an aloof young princess.

Director: Rouben Mamoulian | Stars: Maurice Chevalier, Jeanette MacDonald, Charles Ruggles, Charles Butterworth

Votes: 4,627

7. Blonde Venus (1932)

Passed | 93 min | Drama

A cabaret singer takes up with a millionaire to pay for her gravely-ill husband's operation.

Director: Josef von Sternberg | Stars: Marlene Dietrich, Cary Grant, Herbert Marshall, Dickie Moore

Votes: 5,625

8. Freaks (1932)

Not Rated | 64 min | Drama, Horror

80 Metascore

A circus' beautiful trapeze artist agrees to marry the leader of side-show performers, but his deformed friends discover she is only marrying him for his inheritance.

Director: Tod Browning | Stars: Wallace Ford, Leila Hyams, Olga Baclanova, Roscoe Ates

Votes: 50,626 | Gross: $0.63M

9. American Madness (1932)

Passed | 75 min | Drama, Mystery

Socially-conscious banker Thomas Dickson faces a crisis when his protégé is wrongly accused for robbing the bank, gossip of the robbery starts a bank run, and evidence suggests Dickson's wife had an affair...all during the same day.

Directors: Frank Capra, Allan Dwan, Roy William Neill | Stars: Walter Huston, Pat O'Brien, Kay Johnson, Constance Cummings

Votes: 2,261

10. Scarface (1932)

PG | 93 min | Action, Crime, Drama

90 Metascore

An ambitious and nearly insane violent gangster climbs the ladder of success in the mob, but his weaknesses prove to be his downfall.

Directors: Howard Hawks, Richard Rosson | Stars: Paul Muni, Ann Dvorak, Karen Morley, Osgood Perkins

Votes: 30,326

11. Vampyr (1932)

Not Rated | 75 min | Fantasy, Horror

A drifter obsessed with the supernatural stumbles upon an inn where a severely ill adolescent girl is slowly becoming a vampire.

Director: Carl Theodor Dreyer | Stars: Julian West, Maurice Schutz, Rena Mandel, Sybille Schmitz

Votes: 20,525

12. King Kong (1933)

Passed | 100 min | Adventure, Horror

92 Metascore

A film crew goes to a tropical island for a location shoot, where they capture a colossal ape who takes a shine to their blonde starlet, and bring him back to New York City.

Directors: Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack | Stars: Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong, Bruce Cabot, Frank Reicher

Votes: 91,002 | Gross: $10.00M

13. Queen Christina (1933)

Approved | 99 min | Biography, Drama, Romance

Queen Christina of Sweden is a popular monarch who is loyal to her country. However, when she falls in love with a Spanish envoy, she must choose between the throne and the man she loves.

Director: Rouben Mamoulian | Stars: Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, Ian Keith, Lewis Stone

Votes: 8,620 | Gross: $0.77M

14. Midnight Mary (1933)

Passed | 74 min | Crime, Drama, Romance

An abused orphan sinks into a life of crime.

Director: William A. Wellman | Stars: Loretta Young, Franchot Tone, Ricardo Cortez, Andy Devine

Votes: 1,616

15. Design for Living (1933)

Passed | 91 min | Comedy, Mystery, Romance

A woman cannot decide between two men who love her, and the trio agree to try living together in a platonic friendly relationship.

Director: Ernst Lubitsch | Stars: Fredric March, Gary Cooper, Miriam Hopkins, Edward Everett Horton

Votes: 7,763

16. L'Atalante (1934)

Not Rated | 89 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance

Newly married couple Juliette and a ship captain Jean struggle through marriage as they travel on the L'atalante along with the captain's first mate Le père Jules and a cabin boy.

Director: Jean Vigo | Stars: Dita Parlo, Jean Dasté, Gilles Margaritis, Louis Lefebvre

Votes: 17,476

17. Captain Blood (1935)

Passed | 119 min | Action, Adventure, History

89 Metascore

After treating a Monmouth rebel against King James II in 1680s England, a young Irish doctor is exiled as a slave to Jamaica where he captures a Spanish galleon and becomes the most feared pirate of the Caribbean.

Director: Michael Curtiz | Stars: Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Lionel Atwill, Basil Rathbone

Votes: 16,100 | Gross: $2.96M

18. Carnival in Flanders (1935)

95 min | Comedy, History, Romance

Tells the story of the Spanish invasion of Flanders

Director: Jacques Feyder | Stars: Françoise Rosay, André Alerme, Jean Murat, Louis Jouvet

Votes: 1,405

19. Peter Ibbetson (1935)

Not Rated | 85 min | Drama, Fantasy, Romance

A Victorian-era architect commissioned by the Duke of Towers to design his stables falls in love with the Duchess.

Director: Henry Hathaway | Stars: Gary Cooper, Ann Harding, John Halliday, Ida Lupino

Votes: 2,569

20. Modern Times (1936)

G | 87 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance

96 Metascore

The Tramp struggles to live in modern industrial society with the help of a young homeless woman.

Director: Charles Chaplin | Stars: Charles Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, Henry Bergman, Tiny Sandford

Votes: 259,576 | Gross: $0.16M

21. Dead End (1937)

Approved | 93 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir

The lives of a young man, a young woman, an notorious gangster, and a group of street kids converge one day in a volatile New York City slum.

Director: William Wyler | Stars: Sylvia Sidney, Joel McCrea, Humphrey Bogart, Wendy Barrie

Votes: 8,590

22. La Bête Humaine (1938)

Not Rated | 100 min | Crime, Drama

In this classic adaptation of Emile Zola's novel, a tortured train engineer falls in love with a troubled married woman who has helped her husband commit a murder.

Director: Jean Renoir | Stars: Jean Gabin, Julien Carette, Simone Simon, Fernand Ledoux

Votes: 8,424

23. Port of Shadows (1938)

Not Rated | 91 min | Crime, Drama, Romance

A military deserter finds love and trouble (and a small dog) in a foggy, French port city.

Director: Marcel Carné | Stars: Jean Gabin, Michel Simon, Michèle Morgan, Pierre Brasseur

Votes: 9,966 | Gross: $0.03M

24. The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)

PG | 102 min | Action, Adventure, Romance

97 Metascore

When Prince John and the Norman Lords begin oppressing the Saxon masses in King Richard's absence in 1190s England, a Saxon lord fights back as the outlaw leader of a resistance movement.

Directors: Michael Curtiz, William Keighley | Stars: Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Basil Rathbone, Claude Rains

Votes: 54,515 | Gross: $3.98M

25. She Returned at Dawn (1938)

94 min | Drama, Romance

Married to Karl Ammer, the station master of Thaya, a Hungarian quiet village, Anita is a pretty young peasant who feels deeply bored. She dreams of another life while watching the daily ... See full summary »

Director: Henri Decoin | Stars: Danielle Darrieux, Pierre Dux, Jacques Dumesnil, Pierre Mingand

Votes: 104

26. The Lady Vanishes (1938)

Not Rated | 96 min | Mystery, Thriller

98 Metascore

While travelling in continental Europe, a rich young playgirl realizes that an elderly lady seems to have disappeared from the train.

Director: Alfred Hitchcock | Stars: Margaret Lockwood, Michael Redgrave, Paul Lukas, May Whitty

Votes: 57,183

27. The Rules of the Game (1939)

Not Rated | 110 min | Comedy, Drama

99 Metascore

A bourgeois life in France at the onset of World War II, as the rich and their poor servants meet up at a French chateau.

Director: Jean Renoir | Stars: Marcel Dalio, Nora Gregor, Paulette Dubost, Mila Parély

Votes: 31,340

28. Le Jour Se Leve (1939)

Not Rated | 93 min | Crime, Drama, Romance

After committing a murder, a man locks himself in his apartment and recollects the events that led him to the killing.

Director: Marcel Carné | Stars: Jean Gabin, Jacqueline Laurent, Arletty, Jules Berry

Votes: 8,275 | Gross: $0.03M

29. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)

Passed | 129 min | Comedy, Drama

73 Metascore

A naive youth leader is appointed to fill a vacancy in the U.S. Senate. His idealistic plans promptly collide with corruption at home and subterfuge from his hero in Washington, but he tries to forge ahead despite attacks on his character.

Director: Frank Capra | Stars: James Stewart, Jean Arthur, Claude Rains, Edward Arnold

Votes: 121,421 | Gross: $9.60M

30. The Sea Hawk (1940)

Approved | 127 min | Action, Adventure, History

Geoffrey Thorpe, a buccaneer, is hired by Queen Elizabeth I to nag the Spanish Armada. The Armada is waiting for the attack on England and Thorpe surprises them with attacks on their galleons where he shows his skills on the sword.

Director: Michael Curtiz | Stars: Errol Flynn, Brenda Marshall, Claude Rains, Donald Crisp

Votes: 10,745

31. Christmas in July (1940)

Passed | 67 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance

After the co-workers of an ambitious clerk trick him into thinking he has won $25,000 in a slogan contest, he begins to use the money to fulfill his dreams. What will happen when the ruse is discovered?

Director: Preston Sturges | Stars: Dick Powell, Ellen Drew, Raymond Walburn, Alexander Carr

Votes: 4,268

32. Rebecca (1940)

Approved | 130 min | Drama, Mystery, Romance

86 Metascore

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.

Director: Alfred Hitchcock | Stars: Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine, George Sanders, Judith Anderson

Votes: 146,813 | Gross: $4.36M



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