Best 1940S Movies & TV Shows

Winston Churchill, one of the most revered men of the twentieth century. Adolf Hitler, one of the most hated leaders in contemporary history. Between 1940 and 1945, these two enormously contradictory personalities faced each other in both politics and war. A clash of giants whose story begins in the trenches of the World War I and ends with the debacle of the World War II.

Follow an adventurous family on the time-travelling journey of a lifetime as they take on iconic trends in food, design and domestic gadgetry, beginning in the 1940s. Guided by host Carlo Rota, each week the Campus family from southern Ontario will live through a new decade of Canadian food and domestic trends.

The story is set in Palestine in 1947, during the British mandate period. The Zionists are fighting for the establishment of a Jewish state, and four comrades in arms pressure the young Elisha to overcome his moral qualms and fully commit to the armed struggle.

A young man from a wealthy New York family pursues a career as the leader of a dance band.

In this comedy, actor Hugh Herbert plays six different roles. Only one of the roles is a man. The story centers around a dizzy music lover, who has grown rich through real estate deals. Also figuring in the story are a cab driver/performer, and a down-on-her-luck, aspiring singer. They meet when she hails his cab as she skips out on her former boarding house because she cannot pay rent.

Spanning the years 1945 to 1955, a chronicle of the fictional Italian-American Corleone crime family. When organized crime family patriarch, Vito Corleone barely survives an attempt on his life, his youngest son, Michael steps in to take care of the would-be killers, launching a campaign of bloody revenge.

Framed in the 1940s for the double murder of his wife and her lover, upstanding banker Andy Dufresne begins a new life at the Shawshank prison, where he puts his accounting skills to work for an amoral warden. During his long stretch in prison, Dufresne comes to be admired by the other inmates -- including an older prisoner named Red -- for his integrity and unquenchable sense of hope.

Inspired in part by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s “Americans and the Holocaust” exhibition and supported by its historical resources, this documentary series examines the rise of Hitler and Nazism in Germany in the context of global antisemitism and racism, the eugenics movement in the United States, and race laws in the American south.

The true story of how businessman Oskar Schindler saved over a thousand Jewish lives from the Nazis while they worked as slaves in his factory during World War II.

Vowing to avenge the murder of his parents, Bruce Wayne devotes his life to wiping out crime in Gotham City as the masked vigilante "Batman".

Drawn from interviews with survivors of Easy Company, as well as their journals and letters, Band of Brothers chronicles the experiences of these men from paratrooper training in Georgia through the end of the war. As an elite rifle company parachuting into Normandy early on D-Day morning, participants in the Battle of the Bulge, and witness to the horrors of war, the men of Easy knew extraordinary bravery and extraordinary fear - and became the stuff of legend. Based on Stephen E. Ambrose's acclaimed book of the same name.

All the passengers on an airplane headed for San Francisco are drugged, and when they wake up, it is discovered that a quarter-million dollars is missing. Charlie Chan--and, of course, his #1 son--must discover the identity of the person who doped the passengers and stole the money.

Narrated by George Stevens Jr., this documentary by Oscar-winning director George Stevens trains its lens on World War II in a way that's rarely been seen before: in full color. The effect is nothing less than astounding, as viewers bear witness to the carnage of all-out battle in the European theater, which was home to some of the bloodiest skirmishes ever, from the Norman invasion to the fall of Berlin.

Chronicles the lives of Theodore, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, three members of the most prominent and influential family in American politics. It is the first time in a major documentary television series that their individual stories have been interwoven into a single narrative. This seven-part, fourteen hour film follows the Roosevelts for more than a century, from Theodore’s birth in 1858 to Eleanor’s death in 1962.

The shocking story of how fashion icon Christian Dior and his contemporaries including Coco Chanel, Pierre Balmain, and Cristóbal Balenciaga navigated the horrors of World War Il and launched modern fashion.

The story of a group of inspirational women in a rural Cheshire community with the shadow of World War II casting a dark cloud over their lives. As the conflict takes hold and separates the women from their husbands, fathers, sons and brothers, the characters find themselves under increasing and extraordinary pressures in a rapidly fragmenting world. By banding together as the Great Paxford Women’s Institute, they help maintain the nation’s fabric in its darkest hour, and discover inner resources that will change their lives forever.

The story of J. Robert Oppenheimer’s role in the development of the atomic bomb during World War II.

The gripping, decades-spanning inside story of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and the Prime Ministers who shaped Britain's post-war destiny. The Crown tells the inside story of two of the most famous addresses in the world – Buckingham Palace and 10 Downing Street – and the intrigues, love lives and machinations behind the great events that shaped the second half of the 20th century. Two houses, two courts, one Crown.

As U.S. troops storm the beaches of Normandy, three brothers lie dead on the battlefield, with a fourth trapped behind enemy lines. Ranger captain John Miller and seven men are tasked with penetrating German-held territory and bringing the boy home.

Gyeongseong, 1945. In Seoul's grim era under colonial rule, an entrepreneur and a sleuth fight for survival and face a monster born out of human greed.

Taking inspiration from the comic books of the same name, each episode of this animated anthology series questions, revisits and twists classic Marvel Cinematic moments.

The story of Claire Randall, a married combat nurse from 1945 who is mysteriously swept back in time to 1743, where she is immediately thrown into an unknown world where her life is threatened. When she is forced to marry Jamie, a chivalrous and romantic young Scottish warrior, a passionate affair is ignited that tears Claire's heart between two vastly different men in two irreconcilable lives.

World War II soldier-turned-U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels investigates the disappearance of a patient from a hospital for the criminally insane, but his efforts are compromised by troubling visions and a mysterious doctor.

War and Remembrance is an American miniseries based on the novel of the same name by Herman Wouk. It is the sequel to highly successful The Winds of War.

WWII American Army Medic Desmond T. Doss, who served during the Battle of Okinawa, refuses to kill people and becomes the first Conscientious Objector in American history to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor.

During the rise of fascism in Mussolini's Italy, a wooden boy brought magically to life struggles to live up to his father's expectations.

Follow a new generation of the Dutton family during the early twentieth century when pandemics, historic drought, the end of Prohibition and the Great Depression all plague the mountain west, and the Duttons who call it home.

In Casablanca, Morocco in December 1941, a cynical American expatriate meets a former lover, with unforeseen complications.

A six-part French documentary about the Second World War composed exclusively of actual footage of the war as filmed by war correspondents, soldiers, resistance fighters and private citizens. The series is shown in color, with the black and white footage being fully colorized, save for some original color footage. The only exception to the treatment are most Holocaust scenes, which are presented in the original black and white.

The heartwarming and humorous adventures of a young country vet in the Yorkshire Dales in the 1930s. A remake of the 1978 series.

A documentary series that gives a historical account of the events of World War II, from its roots in the 1920s to the aftermath and the lives it profoundly influenced.

Using previously unreleased archival material in addition to contemporary interviews, this academy award-winning documentary tells the story of the Frank family and presents the first fully-rounded portrait of their brash and free-spirited daughter Anne, perhaps the world's most famous victim of the Holocaust. Written by Dawn M. Barclift

Three women living in three different decades: a housewife in the '60s, a socialite in the '80s and a lawyer in 2018, deal with infidelity in their marriages.

A World War II satire that follows a lonely German boy whose world view is turned upside down when he discovers his single mother is hiding a young Jewish girl in their attic. Aided only by his idiotic imaginary friend, Adolf Hitler, Jojo must confront his blind nationalism.

Based on the real life story of legendary cryptanalyst Alan Turing, the film portrays the nail-biting race against time by Turing and his brilliant team of code-breakers at Britain's top-secret Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, during the darkest days of World War II.

An urban office worker finds that paper airplanes are instrumental in meeting a girl in ways he never expected.

The tale of a mythical cowboy who appears in a corrupt logging town (circa 1940s) and with the aid of his slide guitar and a giant Hellbug, he's able to battle the evil Mayor and his equally selfish twin brother to clean up the logging town of Sourdough Creek.

Embark on a journey from Jamaica to Britain, through the Second World War to 1948 – the year the HMT Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury, England. The play follows three intricately connected stories. Hortense yearns for a new life away from rural Jamaica, Gilbert dreams of becoming a lawyer, and Queenie longs to escape her Lincolnshire roots.

Lost Heroes is the story of Canada's forgotten comic book superheroes and their legendary creators. A ninety-minute journey to recover a forgotten part of Canada's pop culture and a national treasure few have ever heard about. This is the tale of a small country striving to create its own heroes, but finding itself constantly out muscled by better-funded and better-marketed superheroes from the media empire next door.

Wartime secret agents are on a mission to destroy a deadly new type of torpedo, hidden in a Nazi stronghold in France.

America, 1947. Despite hard choices and even harder knocks, Joe and Kate Keller are a success story. They have built a home, raised two sons and established a thriving business. But nothing lasts forever and their contented lives, already shadowed by the loss of their eldest boy to war, are about to shatter. With the return of a figure from the past, long buried truths are forced to the surface and the price of their American dream is laid bare.

During World War II, the usually sleepy town of Gander, Newfoundland is abuzz with activity as the stopover point for many flights between North America and the European Theater. Teenager Terry Fleming, who lives just outside of Gander, is feeling conflicted. He wants to work in Gander so that he can have access to the plethora of movie stars and GIs flying though the area.

Enemy At The Door is a British television drama series made by London Weekend Television for ITV. The series was shown between 1978 and 1980 and dealt with the German occupation of Guernsey, one of the Channel Islands, during the Second World War. The programme generated a certain amount of criticism in Guernsey, particularly for being obviously filmed on Jersey despite being ostensibly set on Guernsey. The series also marked the TV debut of Anthony Head as a member of the island resistance. The theme music was by Wilfred Josephs.

Ed Asner tells the story of RKO Pictures from the 1920s to the 1960s.

This film sheds light on the role of the Catholic Church and the people of Assisi in rescuing Italian Jews from the Nazis in 1943.

A war drama of motor torpedo boats which did much unsung work in WW2, but the naval battles merely provide an exciting story in which an even more special romantic drama is wrapped up.

A film about the early life of the baseball star in the army, particulary his court-martial for insubordination regarding segragation.

Follow the deadliest conflict in human history in real time, week by week, blow by blow.

First American film about the conflict between Jewish nationalists and the British in the creation of the state of Israel.

American conductor John Meredith and his manager, Hank Higgins, go to Russia shortly before the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. Meredith falls in love with beautiful Soviet pianist Nadya Stepanova while they travel throughout the country on a 40-city tour. Along the way, they see happy, healthy, smiling, free Soviet citizens, blissfully living the Communist dream. This bliss is destroyed by the German invasion.