1949 Movies
Take a nostalgic look back at the top movies of 1949, celebrating the films, directors and actors that defined the year and left a lasting legacy in the world of entertainment.
Little Women
Directed by: Mervyn LeRoy
Starring: June Allyson, Peter Lawford, Margaret O'Brien, Elizabeth Taylor
Country: United States of America
Outline: A group of sisters experience life's difficulties and its pleasures while growing up in nineteenth-century America.
Pinky
Directed by: Elia Kazan, John Ford
Starring: Jeanne Crain, Ethel Barrymore, Ethel Waters, William Lundigan
Country: United States of America
Outline: A light-skinned African American woman falls in love with a white doctor, though he is unaware of her true race.
Sands of Iwo Jima
Directed by: Allan Dwan
Starring: John Wayne, John Agar, Adele Mara, Forrest Tucker
Country: United States of America
Outline: A dramatization of the World War II Battle of Iwo Jima.
The Stratton Story
Directed by: Sam Wood
Starring: James Stewart, June Allyson, Frank Morgan, Agnes Moorehead
Outline: Star major league pitcher Monty Stratton loses a leg in a hunting accident, but becomes determined to leave the game on his own terms.
I Was a Male War Bride
Directed by: Howard Hawks
Starring: Cary Grant, Ann Sheridan, Marion Marshall, Randy Stuart
Country: United States of America
Outline: After marrying an American lieutenant with whom he was assigned to work in post-war Germany, a French captain attempts to find a way to accompany her back to the States under the terms of the War Bride Act.
Mr. Belvedere Goes to College
Directed by: Elliott Nugent
Starring: Clifton Webb, Shirley Temple, Tom Drake, Alan Young
Outline: Clifton Webb recreates his Sitting Pretty role as Mr. Lynn Belvedere, the World's Greatest Genius. Belvedere discovers that he is ineligible for an honorary award because he never attended ...
Jolson Sings Again
Directed by: Henry Levin
Starring: Larry Parks, Barbara Hale, William Demarest, Ludwig Donath
Outline: In this sequel to The Jolson Story, we pick up the singer's career just as he has returned to the stage after a premature retirement. But his wife has left him and the appeal of the ...
The Third Man
Directed by: Carol Reed
Starring: Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Trevor Howard
Country: United States of America
Outline: Pulp novelist Holly Martins travels to shadowy, postwar Vienna, only to find himself investigating the mysterious death of an old friend, Harry Lime.
White Heat
Directed by: Raoul Walsh
Starring: James Cagney, Virginia Mayo, Edmond O'Brien, Margaret Wycherly
Country: United States of America
Outline: A psychopathic criminal with a mother complex makes a daring break from prison and leads his old gang in a chemical plant payroll heist. Shortly after the plan takes place, events take a crazy turn.
The Heiress
Directed by: William Wyler
Starring: Olivia de Havilland, Montgomery Clift, Ralph Richardson, Miriam Hopkins
Country: United States of America
Outline: A young naive woman falls for a handsome young man who her emotionally abusive father suspects is a fortune hunter.
Kind Hearts and Coronets
Directed by: Robert Hamer
Starring: Dennis Price, Alec Guinness, Valerie Hobson, Joan Greenwood
Country: United States of America
Outline: A distant poor relative of the Duke of D'Ascoyne plots to inherit the title by murdering the eight other heirs who stand ahead of him in the line of succession.
Barsaat
Directed by: Raj Kapoor
Starring: Nargis, Raj Kapoor, Prem Nath, K.N. Singh
Outline: Pran and Gopal are traveling in a convertible in the Indian countryside but the car breaks down. Near Satpur they come across a village and rest there for a few days. While there Gopal ...
A Letter to Three Wives
Directed by: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Starring: Jeanne Crain, Linda Darnell, Ann Sothern, Kirk Douglas
Country: United States of America
Outline: A letter is addressed to three wives from their "best friend" Addie Ross, announcing that she is running away with one of their husbands...but she does not say which one.
The Set-Up
Directed by: Robert Wise
Starring: Robert Ryan, Audrey Totter, George Tobias, Alan Baxter
Country: United States of America
Outline: Because aging boxer Bill Thompson always lost his past fights, his corrupt manager, without telling Thompson, takes bribes from a betting gangster, to ensure Thompson's pre-arranged dive-loss in the next match.
Twelve O'Clock High
Directed by: Henry King
Starring: Gregory Peck, Hugh Marlowe, Gary Merrill, Millard Mitchell
Country: United States of America
Outline: A hard-as-nails general takes over a bomber unit suffering from low morale and whips them into fighting shape.
Le silence de la mer
Directed by: Jean-Pierre Melville
Starring: Howard Vernon, Nicole Stéphane, Jean-Marie Robain, Ami Aaröe
Country: United States of America
Outline: 1941 in a small town in Nazi occupied France. Against the will of its elderly male and his adult niece residents, the Nazis commandeer a house for one of their officers, Lt. Werner von ...
Bitter Rice
Directed by: Giuseppe De Santis
Starring: Vittorio Gassman, Doris Dowling, Silvana Mangano, Raf Vallone
Outline: Two criminals on the run end up working in a rice field and decide to recruit other workers for their next robbery.
Criss Cross
Directed by: Robert Siodmak
Starring: Burt Lancaster, Yvonne De Carlo, Dan Duryea, Stephen McNally
Country: United States of America
Outline: An armored truck driver and his lovely ex-wife conspire with a gang to have his own truck robbed on the route.
Adam's Rib
Directed by: George Cukor
Starring: Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Judy Holliday, Tom Ewell
Country: United States of America
Outline: Domestic and professional tensions mount when a husband and wife work as opposing lawyers in a case involving a woman who shot her husband.
On the Town
Directed by: Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly
Starring: Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Betty Garrett, Ann Miller
Country: United States of America
Outline: Three sailors on a day of shore leave in New York City look for fun and romance before their twenty-four hours are up.
All the King's Men
Directed by: Robert Rossen
Starring: Broderick Crawford, John Ireland, Joanne Dru, John Derek
Country: United States of America
Outline: The rise and fall of a corrupt politician, who makes his friends richer and retains power by dint of a populist appeal.
The Rocking Horse Winner
Directed by: Anthony Pelissier
Starring: Valerie Hobson, John Howard Davies, Ronald Squire, John Mills
Outline: A young boy receives a rocking horse for Christmas and soon learns that he is able to pick the winning horse at the races.
Andaz
Directed by: Mehboob Khan
Starring: Nargis, Dilip Kumar, V.H. Desai, Cuckoo
Outline: Nina is the rich and spoiled daughter of a rich businessman. One day while horse-riding she loses control of her horse and is rescued by a young man named Dilip. Dilip instantly takes a ...
Champion
Directed by: Mark Robson
Starring: Kirk Douglas, Arthur Kennedy, Marilyn Maxwell, Paul Stewart
Country: United States of America
Outline: Boxer Midge Kelly rises to fame...mainly by stepping on other people.
The Window
Directed by: Ted Tetzlaff
Starring: Bobby Driscoll, Barbara Hale, Arthur Kennedy, Paul Stewart
Country: United States of America
Outline: To avoid the heat of a sweltering summer night a 9-year-old Manhattan boy decides to sleep on the fire escape and witnesses a murder, but no one will believe him.
What happened in 1949?
Discover what the world looked like in 1949: