List your 25 favorite movies of the 1930s

01. It Happened One Night
02. Bringing Up Baby
03. Gone with the Wind
04. The 39 Steps
05. The Lady Vanishes 
06. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
07. Angels with Dirty Faces
08. The Awful Truth 
09. The Thin Man
10. M
11. It's Love I'm After
12. Jezebel
13. Dodsworth
14. Holiday
15. Black Legion
16. The Wizard of Oz
17. Wuthering Heights
18. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
19. The Ex-Mrs. Bradford
20. The Adventures of Robin Hood
21. The Petrified Forest
22. The Old Maid
23. Dead End
24. Mr. Deeds Goes to Town
25. You Can't Take It with You

1. The Wizard of Oz 
2. Gone with the Wind
3. I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang 
4. After the Thin Man 
5. The Public Enemy
6. Only Angels Have Wings
7. The Adventures of Robin Hood
8. A Night at the Opera
9. Of Mice and Men
10. Goodbye, Mr. Chips
11. Modern Times
12. All Quiet on the Western Front
13. City Lights
14. Scarface
15. The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex
16. Dark Victory
17. The Thin Man
18. The Lady Vanishes
19. The Scarlet Pimpernel
20. Stage Door
21. The Prisoner of Zenda
22. Captain Blood
23. Red Dust
24. Mutiny on the Bounty
25. The 39 Steps
26. Holiday
27. Heidi
28. These Three
29. Of Human Bondage
30. Fury

Chronological

01. All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
02. City Lights (1931)
03. The Public Enemy (1931)
04. The Sign of the Cross (1932)
05. It Happened One Night (1934)
06. The 39 Steps (1935)
07. A Night at the Opera (1935)
08. Les Misérables (1935)
09. A Tale of Two Cities (1935)
10. Modern Times (1936)
11. The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936)
12. San Francisco (1936)
13. The Grand Illusion (1937)
14. The Life of Emile Zola (1937)
15. Captains Courageous (1937)
16. The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
17. The Lady Vanishes (1938)
18. Angels with Dirty Faces (1938)
19. Stagecoach (1939)
20. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
21. Ninotchka (1939)
22. Only Angels Have Wings (1939)
23. Gunga Din (1939)
24. Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939)
25. The Four Feathers (1939)

Here are 32 films I love from the 1930s in chronological order. So many great ones. Impossible to rank or limit the number of choices. I consider the expanded decade from 1935 to 1949 to be the period that produced the largest number of great films. Even more important, the highest number of good, entertaining films. People used to say, “I'm going to the movies.” Not, “I’m going to see this or that movie.” They would just go see what was playing and had a very good chance of being entertained. That hasn’t been true for at least 50 years now, maybe longer.

All Quiet On The Western Front / Lewis Milestone (1930)
Morocco / Josef von Sternberg (1930)
Zemlya (Earth) / Aleksandr Dovzhenko (1930)
Animal Crackers / Victor Heerman (1930)
The Public Enemy / William A. Wellman (1931)
M / Fritz Lang (1931)
City Lights / Charles Chaplin (1931)
Horse Feathers / Norman Z. McLeod (1932)
The Old Dark House / James Whale (1932)
Shanghai Express / Josef Von Sternberg (1932)
Rain / Lewis Milestone (1932)
King Kong / Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack (1933)
Duck Soup / Leo McCarey (1933)
Das Testament Des Dr. Mabuse (The Testament of Dr. Mabuse) / Fritz Lang (1933)
The Thin Man / W.S. Van Dyke (1934)
Ukigusa Monogatari (A Story Of Floating Weeds) / Yasojiro Ozu (1934)
The Bride Of Frankenstein / James Whale (1935)
A Night At The Opera / Sam Wood (1935)
Top Hat / Mark Sandrich (1935)
Mutiny On The Bounty / Frank Lloyd (1935)
The 39 Steps / Alfred Hitchcock (1935)
Dracula’s Daughter / Lambert Hillyer (1936)
Swing Time / George Stevens (1936)
The Adventures of Robin Hood / Michael Curtiz and William Keighley (1938)
Jezebel / William Wyler (1938)
The Lady Vanishes / Alfred Hitchcock (1938)
Dark Victory / Edmund Goulding (1939)
Five Came Back / John Farrow (1939)
Only Angels Have Wings / Howard Hawks (1939)
Young Mr. Lincoln / John Ford (1939)
Gunga Din / George Stevens (1939)
La Règle Du Ju (The Rules Of The Game) / Jean Renoir (1939)