Cinematic Era: 1940 Vintage

New Year's greeting card 1940, featuring drawings of sailors.

A Ripley's Believe It or Not short film, it tells the story of a man wrongly imprisoned who goes abroad to find his fortune and ends up getting sent back home on the Titanic.

Three displaced children hitchhike to Buenos Aires, where they get involved in street-crime and heavier stuff. Positive-role-model adults offer a balance to those negative influences.

Lois is bound and gagged, the door handle is rigged to electrocute the Copperhead if he attempts a rescue, and poison gas is set to be released by a timer.

The film deals with the Winter War of 1939-40 between Finland and the USSR. It begins with military exercises in the Autumn of 1939 and moves on to the Soviet invasion; the battle for Karelia; the bombing of Helsinki and other Finnish cities; as well as the activities of the foreign press corps in Finland and the heroic efforts of Finnish women and the Red Cross in their treatment of the wounded.

After having spent 22 months in prison, Viktor Pálos returns to his homeland, where he is going to be involved in the robbery committed by his relatives.

King Chakra is going about his usual palace duties, granting audiences to his advisers, including his Lord Chamberlain, who is keen to see the king fulfill his royal duty of taking 366 wives, including, hopefully among them, the chamberlain's own daughter.

How Britain coped with a Christmas during the war.

A walrus steals the brandy from a Saint Bernard puppy.

A lion with a Bert Lahr voice can't stand being cooped up in a cage at the zoo, and escapes to confront the man who captured him in the first place, big game hunter, Major Doolittle.

Field recordings of religious services in a South Carolina Gullah community. Commandment Keeper Church, Beaufort South Carolina, May 1940 is a 1940 short documentary film which shows religious services taking place in a South Carolina Gullah community. In 2005, Commandment Keeper Church was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

It narrates the history of the Argentine ship that served for many generations like school for the formation of sailors.

"Laureate demonstrates the hand of the painter in its spectacular use of still-lifes and complementary colors, as it metaphorically visualizes a writer's struggle to create poetry by having him (Etting himself) chase and confront various muses (played in classical Greek garb by Gloria Etting and friends of the couple) before receiving his laurels." —Jan-Christopher Horak

Copperhead is electrocuted in Doctor Satan's lab as he captures the Doctor and his thugs.

The information campaign after the Winter War.

Geeta then goes to live with her brother, who is not in a financial position to adequately support her. The film's later scenes focus on her husband's attempts at reconciliation, especially after his father passes away and his other wife (through whom he had a son named Charan) also dies. Initially, Geeta is resistant to a reunion, but Charan's subsequent illness ultimately brings the couple back together.

The science of hearing is explained with animated diagrams of the human auditory system.

A pro-Japanese propaganda film designed to inspire Korean fishermen to cooperate with the occupying regime.

An experimental film in which both sound and visuals were created entirely by McLaren drawing directly upon the film with ordinary pen and ink. The titles are in eight languages. Rereleased with multilingual titles in 1949.

All the ranchers are losing cattle but are unable to find the rustlers. Posing as a prospector, Agent Ken Blair arrives and teams up with young Buzzy to look for them. After Buzzy overhears Ames' men talking, Blair finds evidence that Ames is using trucks to haul away the beef. Looking for tire tracks, Buzzy locates the rustling operation and sends his horse back with a message.

A man is executed for a crime he did not commit. Is his ghost seeking revenge?

While a reception is being prepared for the Queen, a baby feeds from a bottle of milk, restores vigor to the schoolboy doing his calculations, to the blacksmith who's working his iron, to the runner who is getting tired. At last, she is crowned before the ball, with bottles of milk.

A documentary looking at the manufacture of racing car parts in the factories of Mercedes, Auto Union, Continental and Bosch in Germany. It also features actuality from the 1939 Ehrenpreis des fuhrers at the Nurburgring, won by Rudolf Caracciola.

Everybody knows that the captains of the hussars are a wild bunch. This was no different for Gábor Bagodi, who was famous far and wide for his revelry. No wonder his wife left him after a day of revelry. He packed up their little girl and left. Bagodi didn't mourn her much, he went on with his life. As fate would have it, he met a beautiful lady, Baroness Eva Lichtenstein...

Intern Plichta arrives to work at a country estate, where there is a strict ban on marriage for officials, issued by the count. However, Plichta meets Jiřina Krátká on the way, falls in love with her and intends to marry her. Adjunct Ptáček and intern Ráček are also vying for Jiřina. All the officials already have brides in mind, whom they call chicaneries. The news of the count's death causes a stir, and twelve merry-making parties are planned at the estate at once...

The film takes place in Russia during the World War I. Three Hungarian POWs are on the run from their Russian captives. One of them gets shot down. Lieutenant Balogh and Miska, his servant, are brought before Szergej Dragow. The Russian offers to take them on to serve him. Balogh says yes, only to attempt to escape later.

Military cadets at training camp in Dunbar; on parade, at bayonet practice, and taking part in various sports, including many scenes shot at Dunbar Outdoor Pool.

This is a lavish, reverential dramatization of the first Easter based on the passage in Luke 24: 1-35. Included is the appearance of the risen Lord to Mary and the Disciples, the walk to Emmaus and the convincing of St. Thomas that Jesus has risen.

A Marathi film by Master Vinayak.

Rohini, the princess of Suvarnadesh and her closest friend Mangala is on their way to Prayag, for Rohini is going to be betrothed to Trivikram, the king of Prayag. Nevertheless, tragedy strikes when on the way the chariot they are traveling on skids over a precipice. But the girls are saved by the timely intervention of Gorakhnath, the great saint who has the power of performing miracles.

A trip to the spectacular city of Bundi and a Kathakali dance performance, filmed in vivid colour.

A parody of the classic Beau Geste, made on the leftover sets from the 1939 version by San Diego State University students, about brothers Beau, John and Digby Geste, who join the Foreign Legion, where they fall under the rule of tyrannical Sergeant Markoff. Beau and John are assigned to Fort Zinderneuf, where Markoff tries to break their spirit, aware of a dark family secret concerning a fabulous jewel one of them carries. As tensions rise, Arabs attack the fort and rivalries must be thrown aside in a desperate battle for life.

A surreal 1940 film by an amateur cineaste Cynthia Childs about a woman's infidelitous evening out on the town. Added score composed and performed by Stephen Horne in 2020.

Tongue-in-cheek film showing a domestic robot freeing housewives of their chores (and intimating that their work is hardly necessary); actually a promo showing how relays and switches function in the modern automobile. Shown at the New York World's Fair in 1940.

Arne Sucksdorff’s debut—made when he was 23— is a lyrical short about Sweden’s late-summer crayfish fishery: night-time trapping on water, daybreak on the shore, and the rhythms of August nature rendered in carefully composed images. Often grouped with This Land Is Full of Life as one of Sucksdorff’s “hymns to the Swedish summer,” the film distills a 24-hour cycle into a seven-minute nature rhapsody.

Follows two men who are raised as brothers and compete for the love of the same woman.

A Santa Fe Railroad educational film on the steam locomotive in their role in industry and passenger travel.

A young man who travels from the country to he city to study law has economic hardship until he receives help from a neighbor.

A expressive documentary and one of the earliest works of José Luis Sáenz de Heredia.

A nostalgic, slightly syrupy tour through the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exhibition in San Francisco by way of archive footage and a chuckling narrator. Among the famous faces that pop up include Thomas Alva Edison and Henry Ford.

A training documentary describing basic flight information for pilots of the Curtiss-Wright P-40 Warhawk pursuit aircraft.

Dinky is scared off by hunters, finding his way to a farmyard. There he tries to join a chicken family, but is rejected until he saves a chick who's fallen into a well.

A Terrytoons cartoon released 28 July 1940.

Savor the sounds of big band jazz and swing with this compendium of live performance clips from some of the genre's most legendary musicians. Besides innovative clarinetist, composer and bandleader Artie Shaw and the incomparably elegant pianist, composer and bandleader Duke Ellington, other featured artists include trombonist Jack Teagarden, singer and bandleader Cab Calloway and bandleader Boyd Raeburn.

An illustration of the insidious rise of the Nazi Party from its post World War One origins through Adolf Hitler’s conniving to become the leader of the party and eventual dictator of his self-styled Third Reich.

The title character has his truck in the circus caravan disintegrate and he wanders into an abandoned house where where he winds up drinking some medicine that is highly alcoholic.

A comic look at prehistoric life.

A middle-aged auto sales manager is having poor results with his staff, so he gets some advice from his hanky-wearing father.

A short film showing how the Teleprinter works.

Japanese horror movie from 1940.

Mazurkiewicz, a lawyer from Radom, arrives in Warsaw to ask for Sabina's hand in marriage. Sabina is secretly in love with young Władzio Mącki, who, being preoccupied with the beautiful cabaret actress Kamilla, pays no attention to the young girl. At the request of the Mąckis, Mazurkiewicz goes behind the scenes to seduce her, but he himself succumbs to her charms and gets involved in an incredible scandal. Sabina follows Mazurkiewicz to the theater to warn her beloved, and when she meets Kamilla, at her urging, she changes into her dresses and imitates her mannerisms, winning Władzio's heart. Mazurkiewicz invites Kamilla to his hotel for dinner, where all the members of the Mącki family arrive one after another. Amidst spasms, arguments, and laughter, the situation is resolved to everyone's satisfaction.