1944 Movies
Take a nostalgic look back at the top movies of 1944, celebrating the films, directors and actors that defined the year and left a lasting legacy in the world of entertainment.
Anguish
Directed by: Sonny Mallhi
Starring: Ryan Simpkins, Annika Marks, Karina Logue
Country: United States of America
California
Directed by: Michele Lupo
Starring: Miguel Bosé, Giuliano Gemma, Malisa Longo, Enzo Fiermonte, Andrea Aureli, Raimund Harmstorf, William Berger, Franco Fantasia, Mario Novelli, Franco Ressel, Dana Ghia, Chris Avram
Country: Italy
To Have and Have Not
Directed by: Howard Hawks
Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Walter Brennan, Dolores Moran
Country: United States of America
Outline: During World War II, American expatriate Harry Morgan helps transport a French Resistance leader and his beautiful wife to Martinique while romancing a sensuous lounge singer.
Meet Me in St. Louis
Directed by: Vincente Minnelli
Starring: Judy Garland, Margaret O'Brien, Mary Astor, Lucille Bremer
Country: United States of America
Outline: In the year leading up to the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, the four Smith daughters learn lessons of life and love, even as they prepare for a reluctant move to New York.
Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo
Directed by: Mervyn LeRoy
Starring: Spencer Tracy, Van Johnson, Robert Walker, Tim Murdock
Country: United States of America
Outline: In the wake of Pearl Harbor, a young lieutenant leaves his expectant wife to volunteer for a secret bombing mission which will take the war to the Japanese homeland.
Hollywood Canteen
Directed by: Delmer Daves
Starring: Bette Davis, John Garfield, The Andrews Sisters, Jack Benny
Outline: Two soldiers on sick leave spend three nights at the Hollywood Canteen before going back to active duty. With a little friendly help from John Garfield, Slim gets to kiss Joan Leslie, whom ...
Going My Way
Directed by: Leo McCarey
Starring: Bing Crosby, Barry Fitzgerald, Frank McHugh, James Brown
Country: United States of America
Outline: Father Charles O'Mailey, a young priest at a financially failing Church in a tough neighborhood, gains support and inspires his superior.
The White Cliffs of Dover
Directed by: Clarence Brown
Starring: Irene Dunne, Alan Marshal, Roddy McDowall, Frank Morgan
Country: United States of America
Outline: London based American nurse, Susan, Lady Ashwood, is at the hospital awaiting the imminent arrival of injured soldiers. She is hoping that her enlisted son, Sir John Ashwood, who resembles ...
Bathing Beauty
Directed by: George Sidney
Starring: Red Skelton, Esther Williams, Basil Rathbone, Bill Goodwin
Country: United States of America
Outline: A contrived misunderstanding leads to the breakup of a songwriter and his fiancée. She returns to work as a gym teacher at an all-girls school, but a legal loophole allows the man to enroll as one of her students.
Double Indemnity
Directed by: Billy Wilder
Starring: Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson, Byron Barr
Country: United States of America
Outline: An insurance representative lets himself be talked into a murder/insurance fraud scheme that arouses an insurance investigator's suspicions.
Laura
Directed by: Otto Preminger
Starring: Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb, Vincent Price
Country: United States of America
Outline: A police detective falls in love with the woman whose murder he is investigating.
Arsenic and Old Lace
Directed by: Frank Capra
Starring: Cary Grant, Priscilla Lane, Raymond Massey, Jack Carson
Country: United States of America
Outline: A drama critic learns on his wedding day that his beloved maiden aunts are homicidal maniacs, and that insanity runs in his family.
Lifeboat
Directed by: Alfred Hitchcock
Starring: Tallulah Bankhead, John Hodiak, Walter Slezak, William Bendix
Country: United States of America
Outline: Several survivors of a torpedoed ship find themselves in the same boat with one of the men who sunk it.
Mr. Skeffington
Directed by: Vincent Sherman
Starring: Bette Davis, Claude Rains, Walter Abel, George Coulouris
Country: United States of America
Outline: Popular and beautiful Fanny Trellis is forced into a loveless marriage with an older man, Jewish banker Job Skeffington, in order to save her beloved brother Trippy from an embezzlement charge, and predictable complications result.
The Woman in the Window
Directed by: Fritz Lang
Starring: Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett, Raymond Massey, Edmund Breon
Country: United States of America
Outline: When a conservative middle-aged professor engages in a minor dalliance with a femme fatale, he is plunged into a nightmarish quicksand of blackmail and murder.
Hail the Conquering Hero
Directed by: Preston Sturges
Starring: Eddie Bracken, Ella Raines, Raymond Walburn, William Demarest
Outline: Woodrow is discharged from the military for hay fever, but fabricates receiving a heroic honorable discharge before returning home.
A Canterbury Tale
Directed by: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
Starring: Eric Portman, Sheila Sim, Dennis Price, John Sweet
Country: United States of America
Outline: Three modern day pilgrims investigate a bizarre crime in a small town on the way to Canterbury.
The Fighting Sullivans
Directed by: Lloyd Bacon
Starring: Anne Baxter, Thomas Mitchell, Selena Royle, Edward Ryan
Country: United States of America
Outline: The lives of a close-knit group of brothers growing up in Iowa during the days of the Great Depression and of World War II and their eventual deaths in action in the Pacific theater are ...
Murder, My Sweet
Directed by: Edward Dmytryk
Starring: Dick Powell, Claire Trevor, Anne Shirley, Otto Kruger
Country: United States of America
Outline: After being hired to find an ex-con's former girlfriend, Philip Marlowe is drawn into a deeply complex web of mystery and deceit.
The Suspect
Directed by: Robert Siodmak
Starring: Charles Laughton, Ella Raines, Dean Harens, Stanley Ridges
Outline: In 1902 London, unhappily married Philip Marshall meets young Mary Gray, who is unemployed and depressed. Their deepening friendship, though physically innocent, is discovered by Philip's ...
The Uninvited
Directed by: Lewis Allen
Starring: Ray Milland, Ruth Hussey, Donald Crisp, Cornelia Otis Skinner
Country: United States of America
Outline: A composer and his sister discover that the reason they are able to purchase a beautiful gothic seacoast mansion very cheaply is the house's unsavory past.
The Thin Man Goes Home
Directed by: Richard Thorpe
Starring: William Powell, Myrna Loy, Lucile Watson, Gloria DeHaven
Country: United States of America
Outline: Nick and Nora visit Nick's hometown, and end up involved in a murder.
National Velvet
Directed by: Clarence Brown
Starring: Mickey Rooney, Elizabeth Taylor, Donald Crisp, Anne Revere
Country: United States of America
Outline: A jaded former jockey helps a young girl prepare a wild but gifted horse for England's Grand National Sweepstakes.
The Seventh Cross
Directed by: Fred Zinnemann
Starring: Spencer Tracy, Signe Hasso, Hume Cronyn, Jessica Tandy
Outline: In Nazi Germany in 1936 seven men escape from a concentration camp. The camp commander puts up seven crosses and, as the Gestapo returns each escapee he is put to death on a cross. The ...
This Happy Breed
Directed by: David Lean
Starring: Robert Newton, Celia Johnson, Amy Veness, Alison Leggatt
Country: United States of America
Outline: Noel Coward's attempt to show how the ordinary people lived between the wars. Just after WWI the Gibbons family moves to a nice house in the suburbs. An ordinary sort of life is led by the ...
What happened in 1944?
Discover what the world looked like in 1944: