The Roaring Twenties (1939), They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969), The Wind Rises (2013), The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), The Public Enemy (1931), Easy Living (1937), The Fighting Sullivans (1944), Wild Boys of the Road (1933) ... Let's take a look at the ranked list of the best Great Depression movies.
Storyline: After the WWI Armistice Lloyd Hart goes back to practice law, former saloon keeper George Hally turns to bootlegging, and out-of-work Eddie Bartlett becomes a cab driver. Eddie builds a fleet of cabs through delivery of bootleg liquor and hires Lloyd as his lawyer. George becomes Eddie's partner and the rackets flourish until love and rivalry interfere.
Plot Keywords: bootlegger, soldier, attorney, friend, singer, cab driver, gritty ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Gloria is a young woman of the Depression. She has aged beyond her years and feels her life is hopeless, having been cheated and betrayed many times in her past. While recovering from a suicide attempt, she gets the idea from a movie magazine to head for Hollywood to make it as an actress. Robert is a desperate Hollywood citizen trying to become a director, never doubting he'll make it. Robert and Gloria meet and decide to enter a dance marathon, one of the crazes of the 1930's. The grueling dancing takes its toll on Gloria's already weakened spirit, and she tells Robert that she'd be better off dead, that her life is hopeless - all the while acting cruelly and bitterly, alienating those around her, trying to convince him to shoot her and put her out of her misery. After all, they shoot horses, don't they?—alfiehitchie
Plot Keywords: failed actress, sailor, bombshell, farmer, wife, emcee, bleak ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Jiro dreams of flying and designing beautiful airplanes, inspired by the famous Italian aeronautical designer Caproni. Nearsighted from a young age and unable to be a pilot, Jiro joins a major Japanese engineering company in 1927 and becomes one of the world's most innovative and accomplished airplane designers. The film chronicles much of his life, depicting key historical events, including the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, the Great Depression, the tuberculosis epidemic and Japan's plunge into war. Jiro meets and falls in love with Nahoko, and grows and cherishes his friendship with his colleague Honjo.—Official site
Plot Keywords: pilot, designer, engineer, dreamy, spectacular, profound, striking ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Cecilia is a waitress in New Jersey during the Depression and is searching for an escape from her dreary life. Tom Baxter is a dashing young archaeologist in the film "The Purple Rose of Cairo." After losing her job Cecilia goes to see the film in hopes of raising her spirits. Much to her surprise Tom Baxter walks off the screen and into her life. There's only one problem..Tom isn't real. Meanwhile Hollywood is up in arms when they dicover that other Tom Baxters are trying to leave the screen in other theatres. Will Tom ever return and finish the film or will he decide to stay in the real world?
Plot Keywords: waitress, husband, producer, actor, archaeologist, countess, quirky ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Tom Powers and Matt Doyle are best friends and fellow gangsters, their lives frowned upon by Tom's straight laced brother, Mike, and Matt's straight laced sister, Molly. From their teen-aged years into young adulthood, Tom and Matt have an increasingly lucrative life, bootlegging during the Prohibition era. But Tom in particular becomes more and more brazen in what he is willing to do, and becomes more obstinate and violent against those who either disagree with him or cross him. When one of their colleagues dies in a freak accident, a rival bootlegging faction senses weakness among Tom and Matt's gang, which is led by Paddy Ryan. A gang war ensues, resulting in Paddy suggesting that Tom and Matt lay low. But because of Tom's basic nature, he decides instead to take matters into his own hands.
Plot Keywords: gangster, bootlegger, police officer, veteran, friend, melodramatic, brash ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: J.B. Ball, a rich financier, gets fed up with his free-spending family. He takes his wife's just-bought (very expensive) sable coat and throws it off the roof, it lands on poor hard-working girl Mary Smith. But it isn't so easy to just give away something so valuable, as he soon learns.—Ken Yousten <kyousten@bev.net>
Plot Keywords: office worker, wealthy man, son, wife, hotel owner, stockbroker, cheeky ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: The lives of a close-knit group of brothers growing up in Iowa during the days of the Great Depression and of World War II and their eventual deaths in action in the Pacific theater are chronicled in this film based on a true story.—JD-2
Plot Keywords: brother, soldier, sister, mother, father, wife, emotional ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: At the bottom of the depression, Tom's mother has been out of work for months when Ed's father loses his job. Not to burden their parents, the two high school sophomores decide to hop the freights and look for work. Wherever they go, there are many other kids just like them, so Tom, Ed and now Sally stick together. They camp in places like 'Sewer City' as long as they can until the local authorities run them off. They travel all over the mid west and when they get to New York, Ed thinks that they may finally find work.—Tony Fontana <tony.fontana@spacebbs.com>
Plot Keywords: teen boy, high-school student, police officer, teen girl, aunt, gritty, dark ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: A boy whose mother is forced into a sanitarium and father gets a job as a traveling salesman. The boy fends for himself in a seedy SRO hotel.—Mark Allyn <allyn@netcom.com>
Plot Keywords: young boy, mother, father, brother, charming, emotional, winsome ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: A cameraman is knocked over during a football game. His brother in law as the king of the ambulance chasing lawyers starts a suit while he's still knocked out. The cameraman is against it until he hears that his ex-wife will be coming to see him. He pretends to be injured to get her back, but also sees what the strain is doing to the football player who injured him.
Plot Keywords: lawyer, cameraman, doctor, athlete, ex-wife, investigator, witty ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: It's the Depression, and everyone needs to hold onto a dream to get them through the bad times. Car maker Charles Howard is no different, he who is trying to rebuild his life after the tragic death of his only child and the resulting end of his first marriage. With second wife Marcela at his side, Charles wants to get into horse racing and ends up with a team of underdogs who are also chasing their own dream. The first is trainer Tom Smith, who has a natural instinct to spot the capabilities of horses. The second is the horse Tom chooses for Charles, Seabiscuit, an unconventional choice as despite his pedigreed lineage, Seabiscuit is small at fifteen and a half hands tall with a slight limp. But Tom can see something in Seabiscuit's nature to make him a winner, if only Seabiscuit can be retrained from his inbred losing ways. And third is the jockey they decide to hire, Johnny "Red" Pollard, so nicknamed because of his hair color. Like Tom, Red has always shown a natural way with ...
Plot Keywords: horse owner, jockey, horse, horse trainer, wife, child, uplifting ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Thrilled by a performance she sees at a fair, Sonora (Gabrielle Anwar) tries to land a spot as a daredevil who rides horses off of high dives. With the help of Al Carver (Michael Schoeffling), whose father runs the show, she works toward her goal. An injury to star rider Marie (Kathleen York) paves her way, and she finds herself on the diving platform. Her life looks complete now that she and Al are in love, but she is about to be thrust into the most trying time of her life.—Kacey M.
Plot Keywords: teen girl, horse, horse trainer, orphan, aunt, boyfriend, emotional ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: It is during the great depression in the US, and the land is full of people who are now homeless. Those people, commonly called "hobos", are truly hated by Shack (Borgnine), a sadistical railway conductor who swore that no hobo will ride his train for free. Well, no-one but "A" Number One (Lee Marvin), who is ready to put his life at stake to become a local legend - as the first person who survived the trip on Shack's notorious train.—Brian Peterson calyooper@email.com
Plot Keywords: hobo, conductor, police officer, tense, spirited, railway, railyard ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: The saga of Tom Holmes - a man of principles - from the Great War to the Great Depression. Will he ever get a break? His war heroics earn fame and a medal for someone else, and his wounds result in a morphine addiction that costs him a job, his reputation in his home town, and months in a clinic. He goes to Chicago, where he's enterprising and dedicated to his work and his fellow workers, but an invention he champions results in the opposite of his intentions, leading to loss of life and an unjust imprisonment. After release, during the Depression, he must face local "red squads" and vigilante groups jousting out jobless men. Will anyone see his true heroic character?—<jhailey@hotmail.com>
Plot Keywords: veteran, soldier, businessman, communist, wife, doctor, bleak ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: The difficult 1930s is a time of robbers who knock over banks and other rich targets with alarming frequency. Of them, none is more notorious than John Dillinger, whose gang plies its trade with cunning efficiency against big businesses while leaving ordinary citizens alone. As Dillinger becomes a folk hero, FBI head J. Edger Hoover is determined to stop his ilk by assigning ace agent Melvin Purvis to hunt down Dillinger. As Purvis struggles with the manhunt's realities, Dillinger himself faces an ominous future with the loss of friends, dwindling options and a changing world of organized crime with no room for him.
Plot Keywords: outlaw, detective, girlfriend, dark, gritty, intense, thrilling ...
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