The Grapes of Wrath, USA, 1940, 129 min. Starring Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell, John Carradine. Directed by John Ford. John Steinbeck's novel of the Depression (and the politics it helped foster) gets top flight treatment by Ford. The director continues his study of the move westward while effectively portraying Tom Joad's struggle to understand the forces that he and his kin are up against.

Rebecca, USA, 1940, 130 min. Starring Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine, George Sanders, Judith Anderson. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Hitchcock's first American film is, humorously, about as British as you can get. Newlywed Fontaine, upon moving into new husband Olivier's house finds that the memory of his previous wife hasn't quite faded as of yet. Intense gothic atmosphere aided by Anderson's forcefully chilling performance as Mrs. Danvers.

Citizen Kane, USA, 1941, 119 min. Starring Orson Welles, Joseph Cotton. Directed by Orson Welles. There's not much to say about this that hasn't already been said, but just in case: Welles was only twenty-five years old when he made this groundbreaking work. That he did so in the face of considerable adversity – something that regrettably plagued just about every project he conceived – makes it all the more impressive.

The Magnificent Ambersons, USA, 1942, 88 min. Starring Joseph Cotten, Dolores Costello, Anne Baxter, Tim Holt, Agnes Moorehead. Directed by Orson Welles (with uncredited work by Fred Fleck, Jack Moss and Robert Wise). Welles' follow-up to his classic Citizen Kane was this adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about a young man from a privileged family who seeks to undermine a wealthy suitor's attempts to woo his widowed mother and brings disaster down on the family in the process. As dramatic as what was on screen may have been, what happened off screen was just as so. In Welles' absence the studio chopped the film down from its original 134-minute running time to 88 minutes and brought in other directors to shoot new material, an unfortunate occurrence that was characteristic of the troubles that would plague the masterful filmmaker for the rest of his career.

Ossessione, Italy, 1942, 140 min. Starring Massimo Girotti, Clara Calamai. Directed by Luchino Visconti. Fairly faithful, if decidedly European, version of James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice is widely considered to be the first example of the burgeoning neo-realist movement in Italy. Visconti made the film without rights to the book, the unfortunate result of which was Americans didn't get to see this until the mid-'70s.