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Best Drama Movies of the 1940s, Ranked by IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic and TMDB
337 drama films from the 1940s are in our catalog; the 50 best are ranked below. Top of the list is It's a Wonderful Life (1946), at 8.6 on IMDb. The average IMDb score across this list is 7.9. Biggest split between audiences and critics: Notorious, 7.9 on IMDb against 100 on Metacritic.
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| # | Movie | Genre | IMDb | Tomato | Meta | TMDB | Director |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | It's a Wonderful Life '1946 | Drama / Fantasy | 8.6 | 94% | 89 | 8.3 | Frank Capra |
| 2 | Casablanca '1943 | Drama / Romance | 8.5 | 99% | 100 | 8.1 | Michael Curtiz |
| 3 | Citizen Kane '1941 | Mystery / Drama | 8.2 | 99% | 100 | 8.0 | Orson Welles |
| 4 | Bicycle Thieves '1948 | Drama | 8.2 | 99% | - | 8.2 | Vittorio De Sica |
| 5 | The Treasure of the Sierra Madre '1948 | Drama / Western | 8.2 | 100% | 98 | 8.0 | John Huston |
| 6 | Children of Paradise '1945 | Drama / Romance | 8.3 | 98% | 96 | 8.0 | Marcel Carné |
| 7 | The Grapes of Wrath '1940 | Drama | 8.1 | 100% | 96 | 7.8 | John Ford |
| 8 | The Best Years of Our Lives '1946 | Drama / Romance / War | 8.1 | 97% | 93 | 7.7 | William Wyler |
| 9 | Late Spring '1949 | Drama | 8.2 | 100% | 93 | 8.0 | Yasujirō Ozu |
| 10 | The Red Shoes '1948 | Drama / Romance | 8.1 | 98% | - | 8.0 | Michael Powell |
| 11 | White Heat '1949 | Crime / Drama / Thriller | 8.1 | 94% | 89 | 7.7 | Raoul Walsh |
| 12 | The Heiress '1949 | Drama / Romance | 8.1 | 100% | - | 7.8 | William Wyler |
| 13 | Brief Encounter '1945 | Drama / Romance | 8.0 | 95% | 92 | 7.7 | David Lean |
| 14 | The Shop Around the Corner '1940 | Comedy / Drama / Romance | 8.0 | 99% | 96 | 8.1 | Ernst Lubitsch |
| 15 | Rome, Open City '1945 | Drama / War | 8.0 | 100% | - | 8.0 | Roberto Rossellini |
| 16 | A Matter of Life and Death '1946 | Romance / Fantasy / Drama | 8.0 | 97% | - | 7.7 | Emeric Pressburger |
| 17 | Rope '1948 | Thriller / Crime / Drama | 7.9 | 93% | 73 | 7.9 | Alfred Hitchcock |
| 18 | Notorious '1946 | Drama / Romance / Thriller | 7.9 | 96% | 100 | 7.7 | Alfred Hitchcock |
| 19 | Miracle on 34th Street '1947 | Comedy / Drama | 7.9 | 96% | 88 | 7.4 | George Seaton |
| 20 | Laura '1944 | Drama / Mystery | 7.9 | 100% | - | 7.6 | Otto Preminger |
| 21 | The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp '1943 | War / Drama / Romance | 8.0 | 97% | - | 7.5 | Emeric Pressburger |
| 22 | Beauty and the Beast '1946 | Drama / Fantasy / Romance | 7.9 | - | 92 | 7.5 | Jean Cocteau |
| 23 | Mildred Pierce '1945 | Crime / Drama | 7.9 | 88% | 88 | 7.6 | Michael Curtiz |
| 24 | Day of Wrath '1943 | Drama | 8.0 | 100% | - | 8.0 | Carl Theodor Dreyer |
| 25 | Shoeshine '1946 | Drama | 8.0 | 100% | 82 | 7.8 | Vittorio De Sica |
| 26 | The Lost Weekend '1945 | Drama | 7.8 | 97% | - | 7.6 | Billy Wilder |
| 27 | The Little Foxes '1941 | Drama | 7.9 | - | - | 7.5 | William Wyler |
| 28 | Gaslight '1944 | Thriller / Drama / Mystery / Crime | 7.8 | 94% | 78 | 7.5 | George Cukor |
| 29 | Great Expectations '1946 | Drama / Romance | 7.8 | 100% | 90 | 7.3 | David Lean |
| 30 | A Tree Grows in Brooklyn '1945 | Drama | 8.0 | 94% | - | 7.5 | Elia Kazan |
| 31 | The Ghost and Mrs. Muir '1947 | Romance / Fantasy / Drama | 7.8 | 100% | - | 7.5 | Joseph L. Mankiewicz |
| 32 | Monsieur Verdoux '1947 | Comedy / Crime / Drama | 7.8 | 97% | - | 7.7 | Charlie Chaplin |
| 33 | Stray Dog '1949 | Crime / Drama / Thriller / Mystery | 7.8 | 100% | - | 7.6 | Akira Kurosawa |
| 34 | Germany, Year Zero '1948 | Drama | 7.8 | 96% | - | 7.6 | Roberto Rossellini |
| 35 | Letter from an Unknown Woman '1948 | Drama / Romance | 7.8 | 100% | - | 7.8 | Max Ophüls |
| 36 | Now, Voyager '1942 | Romance / Drama | 7.8 | 91% | 70 | 7.4 | Irving Rapper |
| 37 | Oliver Twist '1948 | Drama | 7.8 | 100% | 84 | 7.6 | David Lean |
| 38 | Random Harvest '1942 | Romance / Drama | 7.9 | 92% | 62 | 7.3 | Mervyn LeRoy |
| 39 | Red River '1948 | Western / Drama | 7.7 | 100% | 96 | 7.3 | Howard Hawks |
| 40 | I Remember Mama '1948 | Drama | 7.9 | 100% | - | 7.2 | George Stevens |
| 41 | Black Narcissus '1947 | Drama | 7.7 | 100% | 86 | 7.5 | Michael Powell |
| 42 | How Green Was My Valley '1941 | Drama | 7.7 | 93% | 88 | 7.3 | John Ford |
| 43 | The Set-Up '1949 | Drama / Crime | 7.8 | 85% | - | 7.4 | Robert Wise |
| 44 | Scarlet Street '1945 | Drama / Crime | 7.7 | 100% | - | 7.6 | Fritz Lang |
| 45 | Sergeant York '1941 | War / Drama | 7.7 | 81% | - | 7.2 | Howard Hawks |
| 46 | Le Corbeau '1943 | Mystery / Drama / Thriller | 7.8 | 97% | - | 7.5 | Henri-Georges Clouzot |
| 47 | Nightmare Alley '1947 | Drama / Thriller | 7.7 | 87% | 75 | 7.2 | Edmund Goulding |
| 48 | Twelve O'Clock High '1949 | War / Action / Drama | 7.7 | 96% | - | 7.2 | Henry King |
| 49 | Gilda '1946 | Romance / Drama / Thriller | 7.6 | 90% | - | 7.5 | Charles Vidor |
| 50 | The Search '1948 | Drama | 7.8 | 100% | - | 7.1 | Fred Zinnemann |
Our catalog covers roughly the 8,800 most-rated films on TMDB, so lesser-known titles may be missing. Order uses a confidence-weighted IMDb score so a perfect score from a handful of votes does not beat a well-established classic; the scores shown are the raw ones.
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Directors on this list
Frank Capra Michael Curtiz Orson Welles Vittorio De Sica John Huston Marcel Carné John Ford William Wyler Yasujirō Ozu Michael Powell Raoul Walsh David Lean
Actors on this list
James Stewart Donna Reed Humphrey Bogart Ingrid Bergman Orson Welles Joseph Cotten Walter Huston Henry Fonda Dana Andrews Fredric March Chishū Ryū Setsuko Hara