30. 'Hunchback of Notre Dame' (1939)
Charles Laughton commands the screen in perhaps his best role, as Quasimodo the disfigured bell-ringer of Notre Dame Cathedral and literature's original 'Elephant Man.' In heroic fashion he risks all to save the woman of his dreams, gypsy girl Esmeralda (Maureen O'Hara), from the evil clutches of the Parisian constabulary. This adaptation of Victor Hugo's timeless novel takes liberties with the original ending (Esmeralda and Quasimodo die in the book), but, nonetheless, is the default version that most other film versions have copied.

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29. 'Ninotchka' (1939)
The famed Ernst Lubitsch directorial "touch" is on full display in Greta Garbo's penultimate film before she permanently retired from the screen and became almost as famous a recluse as she had been an actress. Garbo plays the title character, an apparatchik who is sent to Paris to retrieve three wayward Russian envoys who've become seduced by the West and gone AWOL. It isn't long before Ninotchka herself falls prey to the beauty of the City of Light as shown to her by a charming expatriate Count (Melvyn Douglas). The film, which was among the first to criticize (satirize, really) the Soviet system, later became a popular stage and then film musical starring Fred Astaire in the Douglas role with Cyd Charisse as a dancing Ninotchka.

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28. 'The Adventures of Robin Hood' (1938)
Lightning struck twice when the cast of 'Captain Blood' reunited three years later to invigorate this folkloric tale of everyone's favorite wealth-redistributing Anglo-Saxon and his band of merry men. Errol Flynn is, hands down, the most photogenic bandit Sherwood Forest ever concealed, with Olivia De Havilland fetching as Maid Marian. Throw in Basil Rathbone -- hissable as Robin's archenemy Sir Guy of Gisbourne -- and Erich Wolfgang Korngold's Oscar-winning score, and you have rollicking fun that even Little John couldn't shake a stick at.

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27. 'The Lady Vanishes' (1938)
Travelers on a trans-European train are perplexed when an elderly governess (Dame May Whitty) seemingly vanishes into thin air. Michael Redgrave, Margaret Lockwood and Paul Lukas co-star in one of Alfred Hitchcock's better earlier efforts. And well that is was; Hollywood-bound Hitch needed a big hit to establish his credibility Stateside, as his previous three films -- all made in Britain -- were consecutive flops.

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26. 'Stagecoach' (1939)
Although Thomas Mitchell walked off with the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his portrayal of a boozy doctor, director John Ford turned John Wayne (as "The Ringo Kid") into a household name and archetypal Western hero in this, the Duke's breakout role. Claire Trevor, Andy Devine and John Carradine are other stagecoach passengers trying to make it to safety during an Apache uprising, and they'll fare better with gunslinger Ringo on board. Duke and Pappy would go on to make a series of seminal Westerns together but at a price: Their co-dependent relationship, an alternating hot-and-cold friendship that lasted for decades, could flummox the most probing psychoanalyst.

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25. 'The Invisible Man' (1933)
This adaptation (forget all others) of H.G. Wells' classic novel about a mad scientist run amok under the cloak of invisibility ranks as an all-time great in the annals of film horror. Claude Rains is deliciously malevolent as Dr. Jack Griffin (or at least his disembodied voice is, since Rains is bandaged through most of the film). Comely Gloria Stuart (the elderly Rose from 'Titanic') co-stars in a movie brilliantly directed by Universal Studios' horror maestro, James Whale.

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24. 'The Four Feathers' (1939)
Honor's at stake when a British army officer (John Clements) who's just resigned his commission is branded a coward -- given a white feather -- by his three friends and fellow officers on the eve of a military campaign into the Sudan. Ralph Richardson co-stars (as one of the chiding officers) in a movie where courage triumphs, evil is vanquished and everyone keeps a stiff upper lip. Produced by Alexander Korda and directed by his brother Zoltan.

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23. 'Stage Door' (1937)
Rich society girl Terry Randall (Katharine Hepburn) goes incognito and tries to make it on Broadway without dropping names or finessing family connections. Gregory La Cava directs and Ginger Rogers co-stars along with Eve Arden and Lucille Ball in this adaptation of the George Kaufman/Edna Ferber hit of young theater hopefuls sharing their ups and downs in a cramped boarding house. This one contains the classic line (for Hepburn impersonators, especially): "The calla lilies are in bloom ..."

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22. 'Dracula' (1931)
Bela Lugosi, um, cut his teeth on this role as Transylvania's most famous nightcrawler, and in so doing spawned what has become (especially recently) a cottage industry of movies and TV shows devoted to all things that suck ... blood. But the definitive version of Bram Stoker's vampire tale continues to be this film, with Lugosi fangtastic as the Count. Factoid: a Spanish-language version of the movie was filmed simultaneously on the same sets (at night but sans Bela), and some horror aficionados consider it to be superior.

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21. 'All Quiet on the Western Front' (1930)
The first (and perhaps best) anti-war film ever made, has Lew Ayres and his school buddies enlisting (after prodding from their jingoistic teacher) to fight for the Kaiser in World War I. It isn't long before utter disillusionment begins to set in. The futility and absurd contradiction of battle is encapsulated in a scene when Ayres' character mortally wounds a French soldier and then tries desperately to save his life in a bombed-out crater in No-Man's Land. Adapted from the novel by Erich Maria Remarque, the film won Oscars for Best Picture and Director (Lewis Milestone).

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Morris Dickstein on '30s Movies: Screwball Brilliance and What Happened in 1939