1931 - 1935 (#60 - 89)

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#89 - The 39 Steps (1935)

The 39 Steps is a 1935 British thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll. It is about an everyman civilian in London, Richard Hannay, who becomes caught up in preventing an organization of spies called the 39 Steps from stealing British military secrets. After being mistakenly accused of the murder of a counter-espionage agent, Hannay goes on the run to Scotland with an attractive woman in the hopes of stopping the spy ring and clearing his name. Screenwriter Robert Towne remarked, "It's not much of an exaggeration to say that all contemporary escapist entertainment begins with The 39 Steps."[1]

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#88 - The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

Bride of Frankenstein is a 1935 American science-fiction horror film, the first sequel to Universal Pictures' 1931 hit Frankenstein. It is considered one of the few sequels to a great film that is even better than the original film on which it is based. As with the first film, Bride of Frankenstein was directed by James Whale and stars Boris Karloff as The Monster. The sequel features Elsa Lanchesterin the dual role of Mary Shelley and the Monster's mate at the end of the film. The movie starts as an immediate sequel to the events that concluded the earlier film, and is rooted in a subplot of the original Mary Shelley novel, Frankenstein (1818). In the film, a chastened Henry Frankenstein abandons his plans to create life, only to be tempted and finally coerced by his old mentor Dr. Pretorius, along with threats from the Monster, into constructing a mate for the Monster.

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#87 - Triumph of the Will (1935)

Triumph of the Will is a 1935 Nazi propaganda film directed, produced, edited, and co-written by Leni Riefenstahl. It chronicles the 1934 Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg, which was attended by more than 700,000 Nazi supporters. The film contains excerpts from speeches given by Nazi leaders at the Congress, including Adolf Hitler, Rudolf Hess and Julius Streicher, interspersed with footage of massed Sturmabteilung (SA) and Schutzstaffel (SS) troops and public reaction. Hitler commissioned the film and served as an unofficial executive producer; his name appears in the opening titles. The film's overriding theme is the return of Germany as a great power, with Hitler as the leader who will bring glory to the nation. Riefenstahl's techniques—such as moving cameras, aerial photography, the use of long focus lenses to create a distorted perspective, and the revolutionary approach to the use of music and cinematography—have earned Triumph of the Will recognition as one of the greatest propaganda films in history.

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#86 - It's a Gift (1934)

It's a Gift is a 1934 comedy film starring W. C. Fields. It was directed by Norman McLeod, who had directed Fields in his cameo as Humpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland (1933). It concerns the trials and tribulations of a grocer as he battles a shrewish wife, an incompetent assistant, and assorted annoying children, customers, and salesmen. The film contains certain routines, reprised having been honed, that Fields had developed 1915-1925. Lesser known than some of Fields' later works such as The Bank Dick, the film is perhaps the best example of the recurring theme of the Everyman battling against his domestic entrapment.

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#85 - L'Atlante (1934)

L'Atalante is a 1934 French film written and directed by Jean Vigo. Jean Dasté stars as Jean, the captain of a river barge who lives with his new wife Juliette (Dita Parlo) on the barge, along with first mate Père Jules (Michel Simon) and the cabin boy (Louis Lefebvre). After the difficult release of his controversial short film Zero for Conduct, Vigo initially wanted to make a film about Eugène Dieudonné, whom Vigo's father (famous anarchist Miguel Almereyda) had been associated with in 1913. Vigo used many of the technicians and actors that worked with him on Zero for Conduct, such as cinematographer Boris Kaufman and actor Jean Dasté.

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#84 - The Black Cat (1934)

The Black Cat is a 1934 American Pre-Code horror film directed by Edgar G. Ulmer and starring Béla Lugosi and Boris Karloff. The picture was the first of eight movies (six of which were produced by Universal) to pair the two iconic actors. It became Universal Pictures' biggest box office hit of the year, and was also notable for being one of the first movies with an almost continuous music score.

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#83 - The Goddess (1934)

The Goddess (Chinese: 神女; pinyin: Shénnǚ) is a 1934 Chinese silent film. It starred Ruan Lingyu in one of her final roles, and was directed by Wu Yonggang. Luo Mingyou produced the film and Hong Weilie took charge of the cinematography. The public responded with decent enthusiasm at its initial release, possibly due to Ruan Lingyu’s popularity as an actress of her time. During the Cultural Revolution, pressures to cleanse “polluting” elements of the bourgeoisie pushed aside general reverence of The Goddess. After Stanley Kwan’s revival of Ruan Lingyu’s story through the biopic Center Stage (1991) starring Maggie Cheung as Ruan, widespread public interest in the classic films of Chinese cinema spread. Today, The Goddess is one of the best known films of China's cinematic golden age.

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#82 - It Happened One Night (1934)

It Happened One Night is a 1934 American pre-Code romantic comedy film with elements of screwball comedy directed and co-produced by Frank Capra, in collaboration with Harry Cohn, in which a pampered socialite (Claudette Colbert) tries to get out from under her father's thumb and falls in love with a roguish reporter (Clark Gable). The plot is based on the August 1933 short story "Night Bus" by Samuel Hopkins Adams, which provided the shooting title. One of the last romantic comedies created before the MPAA began enforcing the 1930 production code in 1934, the film was released on February 22, 1934.

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#81 - The Thin Man (1934)

The Thin Man is a 1934 American pre-Code comedy-mystery film directed by W. S. Van Dyke and based on the novel of the same name by Dashiell Hammett. The film stars William Powell and Myrna Loy as Nick and Nora Charles; Nick is a hard-drinking, retired private detective, and Nora is a wealthy heiress. The titular "Thin Man" is not Nick Charles, but the man Charles is initially hired to find – Clyde Wynant (part way through the film, Charles describes Wynant as a "thin man with white hair"). The "Thin Man" moniker was thought by many viewers to refer to Nick Charles and, after a time, it was used in the titles of sequels as if referring to Charles.

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#80 - Zero for Conduct (1933)

Zero for Conduct (French: Zéro de conduite) is a 1933 French featurette directed by Jean Vigo. It was first shown on 7 April 1933 and was subsequently banned in France until November 1945. The film draws extensively on Vigo's boarding school experiences to depict a repressive and bureaucratised educational establishment in which surreal acts of rebellion occur, reflecting Vigo's anarchist view of childhood. The title refers to a mark the boys would get which prevented them from going out on Sundays.

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#79 - 42nd Street (1933)

42nd Street is a 1933 American pre-Code musical film, directed by Lloyd Bacon. The choreography was staged by Busby Berkeley. The songs were written by Harry Warren (music) and Al Dubin (lyrics). This backstage musical was very successful at the box office and is now considered a classic by many. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture.

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#78 - Footlight Parade (1933)

Footlight Parade is a 1933 American, pre-Code, musical film starring James Cagney, Joan Blondell, Ruby Keeler and Dick Powell and featuring Frank McHugh, Guy Kibbee, Hugh Herbert and Ruth Donnelly. The movie was written by Manuel Seff and James Seymour from a story by Robert Lord and Peter Milne, and directed by Lloyd Bacon, with musical numbers created and directed by Busby Berkeley. The film's songs were written by Harry Warren (music) and Al Dubin (lyrics) and Sammy Fain (music) and Irving Kahal (lyrics), and include "By a Waterfall", "Honeymoon Hotel", and "Shanghai Lil".

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#77 - Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933)

Gold Diggers of 1933 is a pre-Code Warner Bros. musical film directed by Mervyn LeRoy with songs by Harry Warren (music) and Al Dubin (lyrics), staged and choreographed by Busby Berkeley. It stars Warren William, Joan Blondell, Aline MacMahon, Ruby Keeler, and Dick Powell, and features Guy Kibbee, Ned Sparks and Ginger Rogers. The story is based on the play The Gold Diggers by Avery Hopwood.

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#76 - She Done Him Wrong (1933)

She Done Him Wrong is a 1933 pre-Code American crime/comedy film produced by Paramount Pictures and starring Mae West and Cary Grant. It was directed by Lowell Sherman. The movie is famous for West's many double entendres and quips, including her best-known (and frequently misquoted), "Why don't you come up some time and see me? The film was adapted from the successful Broadway play Diamond Lil by Mae West. The Hays Code declared the play banned from the screen and repeatedly demanded changes to remove associations with or elements from the play, including suggested titles with the word "diamond". The adaption was finally allowed under the condition that the play not be referred to in publicity or advertising.

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#75 - Duck Soup (1933)

Duck Soup is a 1933 pre-Code Marx Brothers comedy film written by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby, with additional dialogue by Arthur Sheekman and Nat Perrin, and directed by Leo McCarey. Compared to the Marx Brothers' previous Paramount films, Duck Soup was a box office disappointment, although it was not a "flop" as is sometimes reported. The film opened to mixed reviews. While contemporaneous critics of Duck Soup felt it did not quite meet the standards of its predecessors, critical opinion has evolved and the film has since achieved the status of a classic. Duck Soup is now widely considered among critics to be a masterpiece of comedy, and the Marx Brothers' finest film.

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#74 - Queen Christina (1933)

Queen Christina is a pre-Code Hollywood biographical film, produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1933 by Walter Wanger and directed by Rouben Mamoulian. It stars Swedish-born actress Greta Garbo and John Gilbert. The film portrays the life of Queen Christina of Sweden who became monarch at the age of six in 1632 and grew to be a powerful and influential leader. As well as the demands of being a war-leader during the Thirty Year's War Queen Christina is expected to marry a suitable royal figure and produce an heir. However, she falls in love with a visiting Spanish envoy whom she is forbidden to marry as he is a Roman Catholic and must choose between love and her royal duty.
#73 - Land Without Bread (1933)

Las Hurdes: Tierra Sin Pan (1933), (English: Land Without Bread or Unpromised Land) is a 27-minute-long documentary film (ethnofiction) directed by Luis Buñuel and co-produced by Buñuel and Ramón Acin. The narration was written by Buñuel, Rafael Sanchez Ventura, and Pierre Unik, with cinematography by Eli Lotar.

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#72 - King Kong (1933)

King Kong is a 1933 American pre-Code monster adventure film directed and produced by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack. The screenplay by James Ashmore Creelman and Ruth Rose was developed from an idea conceived by Cooper and Edgar Wallace and stars Fay Wray, Bruce Cabot and Robert Armstrong. The film tells of a huge, ape-like creature dubbed Kong who perishes in an attempt to possess a beautiful young woman (Wray). King Kong is especially noted for its stop-motion animation by Willis O'Brien and a groundbreaking musical score by Max Steiner.

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#71 - The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933)

The Bitter Tea of General Yen is a 1933 American pre-Code drama film directed by Frank Capra, and starring Barbara Stanwyck, and featuring Nils Asther and Walter Connolly. The film is about an American missionary in Shanghai during the Chinese Civil War who gets caught in a battle while trying to save a group of orphans. Knocked unconscious, she is saved by a Chinese general warlord who brings her to his palace. When the general falls in love with the naive young woman, she fights her attraction to the powerful general and resists his flirtation, yet remains at his side when his fortune turns. The Bitter Tea of General Yen was one of the first films to deal openly with interracial sexual attraction.

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#70 - Sons of the Desert (1933)

Sons of the Desert is a 1933 American Pre-Code film starring Laurel and Hardy, and directed by William A. Seiter. It was first released in the United States on December 29, 1933 and is regarded as one of Laurel and Hardy's greatest films.

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#69 - Vampyr (1932)

Vampyr is a 1932 horror film directed by Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer. The film was written by Dreyer and Christen Jul based on elements from J. Sheridan Le Fanu's collection of supernatural stories In a Glass Darkly. Vampyr was funded by Nicolas de Gunzburg who starred in the film under the name of Julian West among a mostly non-professional cast. Gunzburg plays the role of Allan Gray, a student of the occult who enters the village of Courtempierre, which is under the curse of a vampire. Very little dialogue was used in the film and much of the story is told with silent film-styled title cards. The film was shot entirely on location and to enhance the atmospheric content, Dreyer opted for a washed out, soft focus photographic technique.

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#68 - Love Me Tonight (1932)

Love Me Tonight is a 1932 American pre-Code musical comedy film produced and directed by Rouben Mamoulian, with music by Rodgers and Hart. It stars Maurice Chevalier as a tailor who poses as a nobleman and Jeanette MacDonald as a princess with whom he falls in love. It also stars Charles Ruggles as a penniless nobleman, along with Charles Butterworth and Myrna Loy as members of his family. It features the classic Rodgers and Hart songs "Love Me Tonight", "Isn't it Romantic?", "Mimi", and "Lover". The staging of "Isn't It Romantic?" was revolutionary for its time, combining both singing and film editing, as the song is passed from one singer (or group of singers) to another, all of whom are at different locales.

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#67 - Boudu Saved from Drowning

Boudu Saved from Drowning (French: Boudu sauvé des eaux, "Boudu saved from the waters") is a 1932 French social satire comedy of manners film directed by Jean Renoir. Renoir wrote the film's screenplay, from the play by René Fauchois. The film stars Michel Simon as Boudu. Pauline Kael called it, 'not only a lovely fable about a bourgeois attempt to reform an early hippy... but a photographic record of an earlier France.’

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#66 - I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang

I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang is an American pre-Code crime-drama film directed by Mervyn LeRoy and starring Paul Muni as a wrongfully convicted convict on a chain gang who escapes to Chicago. The film was written by Howard J. Green and Brown Holmes from Robert Elliott Burns's autobiography of a similar name "I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang!" serialised in the True Detective magazine. 

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#65 - Trouble in Paradise (1932)

Trouble in Paradise is a 1932 American Pre-Code romantic comedy film directed by Ernst Lubitsch, starring Miriam Hopkins, Kay Francis, and Herbert Marshall and featuring Charles Ruggles and Edward Everett Horton. Based on the 1931 play The Honest Finder (A Becsületes Megtaláló) by Hungarian playwright László Aladár, the film is about a gentleman thief and a lady pickpocket who join forces to con a beautiful perfume company owner.

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#64 - Scarface (1932)

Scarface (also known as Scarface: The Shame of the Nation and The Shame of a Nation) is a 1932 American pre-Code gangster film starring Paul Muni as Antonio "Tony" Camonte. It was produced by Howard Hughes and Howard Hawks and directed by Hawks. Based on the life of Al Capone, the plot centers on a gangster named Tony Camonte who through his aggressive and violent methods, manages to move up the ranks in the Chicago gangland world. A version of the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre is depicted. Believing that the film was too violent and glorified the illegal acts of the gangster, Hollywood censorship offices called for major alterations of the film including a alternate ending that would greater condemn and shame Tony Camonte. Audience reception was good, but censors banned the film in several cities and states, forcing Howard Hughes to remove the film from circulation and put it in his vault. Along with contemporary classics, Little Caesar, and The Public Enemy, Scarface is regarded as one of the greatest gangster films ever made and significantly influenced the future of the gangster film.

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#63 - Shanghai Express (1932)

Shanghai Express is a 1932 American pre-Code film directed by Josef von Sternberg and starring Marlene Dietrich, Clive Brook, Anna May Wong, and Warner Oland. It was written by Jules Furthman, based on a 1931 story by Harry Hervey. Shanghai Express was released during the midst of the Great Depression. The film was a huge hit with the public, grossing $3.7 million in its initial screenings in the United States alone, becoming the biggest financial success of the Dietrich-von Sternberg collaborations, and was the highest-grossing movie of 1932, surpassing the all-star Grand Hotel.
#62 - Freaks (1932)

Freaks is a 1932 American pre-Code horror film produced and directed by Tod Browning. The original version of the film, running 90 minutes, was considered too shocking to be released, so several scenes were cut, resulting in an abridged runtime of 64 minutes. The film is based on elements from the short story "Spurs" by Tod Robbins. The eponymous characters were played by people who worked as carnival sideshow performers and had real deformities. The film stars Wallace Ford, Leila Hyams, Olga Baclanova and Roscoe Ates. Among the deformed cast were dwarf siblings Harry and Daisy Earles, Johnny Eck who had sacral agenenis, the conjoined twin sisters Daisy and Violet Hilton, and Schlitzie.

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#61 - A Nous La Liberte (1931)

À nous la liberté (English: Freedom for Us) is a 1931 French film directed by René Clair. With a score by Georges Auric, the film has more music than any of Clair's early works. Praised for its scenic design and use of sound, À nous la liberté has been called Clair's "crowning achievement".
#60 - Tabu: A Story of the South Seas (1931)

Tabu: A Story of the South Seas, sometimes simply called Tabu, is a 1931 silent film directed by F.W. Murnau, a docufiction. The film is split into two chapters. The first, called "Paradise", depicts the lives of two lovers on a South Seas island until they are forced to escape the island when the girl is chosen as a holy maid to the gods. The second chapter, "Paradise Lost", depicts the couple's life on a colonised island and how they adapt to and are exploited by Western civilisation. The title of the film comes from the Polynesian concept of tapu from which is derived the English word "taboo."