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1940s Short Documentary Movies

Public list by WPS with 169 movies or TV shows/series

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169 movies found (page 1/6):

The Battle of Midway(1942)

NR
| 18min | Documentary, War
2.9/5 (with 36 votes)

The Japanese attack on Midway in June 1942, filmed as it happened. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive, in partnership with Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, in 2006.

Directed by John Ford - With Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell
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San Pietro(1945)

32min | War, Documentary
3.1/5 (with 28 votes)

This documentary movie is about the battle of San Pietro, a small village in Italy. Over 1,100 US soldiers were killed while trying to take this location, that blocked the way for the Allied forces from the Germans.

Directed by John Huston - With Mark W. Clark, John Huston

The Private Life of a Cat(1946)

22min | Documentary, Drama
3.5/5 (with 16 votes)

An intimate study of the life of a domestic cat, taking place over a period of months as she gives birth to a litter of kittens and cares for them as they grow.

Directed by Maya Deren, Alexandr Hackenschmied

Listen to Britain(1942)

20min | Documentary
3.0/5 (with 25 votes)

A depiction of life in wartime England during the Second World War. Director Humphrey Jennings visits many aspects of civilian life and of the turmoil and privation caused by the war, all without narration.

Directed by Humphrey Jennings, Stewart McAllister - With Chesney Allen, Bud Flanagan, Myra Hess

Warclouds in the Pacific(1941)

20min | Documentary
2.5/5 (with 2 votes)

This short film examines the Japan that emerged at the beginning of the 1900s and was firmly established as an industrialized nation by the outbreak of World War II. Facing the greatest threat in their history, the democracies of the Pacific took careful stock of this new Japan and its strength, and erected a vast system of defence across the world's greatest ocean.

Directed by Stuart Legg - With Lorne Greene

Show-Business at War(1943)

17min | Documentary
3.8/5 (with 1 vote)

A multi-studio effort to show the newsreel audience the progress of the Hollywood war effort.

Directed by Louis de Rochemont - With Irving Berlin, Loretta Young, Lana Turner, Ginger Rogers, Myrna Loy, Carole Lombard, ...

Why We Fight: The Battle of Britain(1943)

PG
| 53min | Documentary, War
3.5/5 (with 7 votes)

The fourth of Frank Capra's Why We Fight series of seven propaganda films, which made the case for fighting and winning the Second World War. It was released in 1943 and concentrated on the German bombardment of the United Kingdom in anticipation of Operation Sea Lion, the planned German invasion.

Directed by Frank Capra, Anthony Veiller

People of the Po Valley(1947)

11min | Documentary
3.2/5 (with 20 votes)

A documentary short detailing the life of Italians living on the Po River in the 1940s.

Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni

With the Marines at Tarawa(1944)

18min | Documentary, War
3.4/5 (with 4 votes)

Documentary short film depicting the harrowing battle between the U.S. Marines and the Japanese for control of the Pacific island of Tarawa.

Directed by Louis Hayward

London Can Take It!(1940)

9min | Documentary, War
3.3/5 (with 8 votes)

A tribute to the courage and resiliency of Britons during the darkest days of the London Blitz.

Directed by Humphrey Jennings, Harry Watt

Van Gogh(1948)

20min | Documentary
3.3/5 (with 8 votes)

Oscar Winning 1948 short film by Alain Resnais, not to be confused with either the Short 1966 TV doc or the 1991 feature film by Maurice Pialat, both of which shared the same name.

Directed by Alain Resnais - With Claude Dauphin

Tuesday in November(1945)

17min | Documentary

A propaganda short about the 1944 United States presidential election, produced by the Office of War information, for overseas distribution. It is meant to explain how the democratic process in America works.

Directed by John Houseman
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Baptism of Fire(1943)

36min | Documentary

Baptism of Fire is a 1943 American documentary, meant to be an Army training film. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

With Elisha Cook Jr., Peter Whitney

To the Shores of Iwo Jima(1945)

20min | Documentary, War
3.4/5 (with 4 votes)

Documentary short film depicting the American assault on the Japanese-held island of Iwo Jima and the massive battle that raged on that key island in the Allied advance on Japan. Four cameramen died bringing this footage to the public.

Directed by Milton Sperling
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A Call for Arms!(1940)

8min | Drama

"What a life for a couple of nudes!" Two dancers find a new way of doing their bit for the boys in this frothy wartime propaganda short. Lord Kitchener's famous finger persuades Joan and Ireen, dancers in a 'Non Stop Nudes' revue (not that we see anything that warrants that title), to make a radical career change. Swapping their skimpy costumes for dowdy munitions factory overalls, they join a growing domestic army of women keeping the machines rolling. Belfast-born Brian Desmond Hurst was essentially a feature film director, whose best-remembered work is the Dickens adaptation Scrooge, but whose credits also included the war films Dangerous Moonlight (1941) and The Malta Story (1953). The Call for Arms was one of three propaganda shorts he made between 1940 and 1941, the most memorable being Miss Grant Goes to the Door, in which a pair of village spinsters outwit a Nazi paratrooper.

Directed by Brian Desmond Hurst - With Jean Gillie

Indonesia Calling(1946)

23min | Documentary
3.0/5 (with 4 votes)

Two weeks after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in August 1945, Indonesian Independence leaders proclaimed “Indonesia Merdeka!” ‘Freedom for Indonesia’ and an end to Dutch colonial rule over the Netherlands East Indies. Internationally renowned Dutch filmmaker Joris Ivens, in Australia as Film Commissioner for the Netherlands East Indies government in exile, resigned his position in protest against Dutch policy, which sought to re-impose its colonial rule. In collaboration with Indonesian activists, Chinese, Indian and Australian trade unionists, and local artists and filmmakers, Ivens made Indonesia Calling, a film documenting the crucial role of Australian trade union support in the establishment of the new Republic of Indonesia. Ivens’ film was an activist documentary; it actively contributed to the events it depicted. All those who worked on it became ‘adversely known’ to the security services.

Directed by Joris Ivens

The United States Marine Band(1942)

10min | Music, War
2.3/5 (with 2 votes)

The US Marine Corps Band and chorus perform several songs associated with the Marines and the Navy. As the songs are played, we see monuments in Washington, DC, various battle scenes, planes in flight, and other scenes designed to instill patriotism in the audience.

Directed by Jean Negulesco - With United States Marine Band

Appointment in Tokyo(1945)

56min | Documentary, War
2.9/5 (with 2 votes)

Produced by the Army Pictorial Service, Signal Corps, with the cooperation of the Army Air Forces and the United States Navy, and released by Warner Bros. for the War Activities Committee shortly after the surrender of Japan. Follow General Douglas MacArthur and his men from their exile from the Philippines in early 1942, through the signing of the instrument of surrender on the USS Missouri on September 1, 1945.

Directed by Jack Hively

Food and Magic(1943)

10min | War, Documentary, Fantasy
2.5/5 (with 3 votes)

A sideshow barker uses magic and visual aids to alert the public that proper food management is both a resource and a weapon that could be to America's advantage if conserved properly in winning the then current World War.

Directed by Jean Negulesco - With Jack Carson

A Diary for Timothy(1945)

40min | Documentary
3.3/5 (with 9 votes)

This brief documentary-style film presents the status of Great Britain near the end of the Second World War by means of a visual diary for a baby boy born in September, 1944. Narration explains to "Timothy" what his family, his neighbors, and his fellow citizens are going through as the war nears its end, and what problems may remain for new Englishmen like Timothy to solve.

Directed by Humphrey Jennings - With Myra Hess, John Gielgud

N.U.(1948)

12min | Documentary
3.1/5 (with 11 votes)

Early documentary by Michelangelo Antonioni.

Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni

A Letter From Bataan(1942)

NR
| 14min | Drama, War
2.3/5 (with 2 votes)

A soldier pleads to the folks to home to conserve scarce wartime resources.

Directed by William H. Pine - With Richard Arlen, Susan Hayward, Jimmy Lydon, Joe Sawyer

Swedes in America(1943)

17min | Documentary
2.8/5 (with 4 votes)

1943 documentary with Ingrid Bergman.

Directed by Irving Lerner - With Ingrid Bergman

Safeguarding Military Information(1941)

9min | Documentary
2.5/5 (with 1 vote)

World War II propaganda short which focuses on the dangers of inadvertent dispersal of military information.

Directed by Preston Sturges - With Walter Huston, Eddie Bracken

Plan for Destruction(1943)

22min | Documentary, History
2.9/5 (with 2 votes)

Plan for Destruction is a 1943 American short propaganda film directed by Edward Cahn. It looks at the Geopolitik ideas of the ex-World War I professor, General Karl Haushofer, who is portrayed as the head of a huge organization for gathering information of strategic value and the mastermind behind Adolf Hitler's wars and plans to enslave the world. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.

Directed by Edward L. Cahn

The Tanks Are Coming(1941)

20min | Comedy
2.5/5 (with 2 votes)

Educational short about the status of battle tanks and tankist training in the American Army in pre-War 1941, featuring a comical Army trainee from the Bronx.

Directed by B. Reeves Eason - With George Tobias, Gig Young

Seal Island(1948)

27min | Documentary
3.6/5 (with 5 votes)

Seal Island is a 1948 American documentary film directed by James Algar. It won an Academy Award in 1949 for Best Short Subject (Two-Reel).

Directed by James Algar

Facing Your Danger(1946)

10min | Documentary, Adventure
2.9/5 (with 3 votes)

This Warner Bros. The Sports Parade series short chronicles the attempt by a group of men to navigate the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon to Lake Mead. Led by Norman D. Nevills, nine men undertake a nineteen days trip in three specially built rowboats through the more than 200 rapids, some which run at 30 mph. Along the way, they see the remnants of previous expeditions. They also visit abandoned Pueblo Indian cave dwellings.

With Knox Manning

Death Mills(1945)

22min | War, Documentary
3.3/5 (with 6 votes)

Originally made with a German soundtrack for screening in occupied Germany and Austria, this film was the first documentary to show what the Allies found when they liberated the Nazi extermination camps: the survivors, the conditions, and the evidence of mass murder. The film includes accounts of the economic aspects of the camps' operation, the interrogation of captured camp personnel, and the enforced visits of the inhabitants of neighboring towns, who, along with the rest of their compatriots, are blamed for complicity in the Nazi crimes - one of the few such condemnations in the Allied war records.

Directed by Billy Wilder, Hanus Burger

Death Mills(1945)

22min | War, Documentary
3.2/5 (with 3 votes)

Originally made with a German soundtrack for screening in occupied Germany and Austria, this film was the first documentary to show what the Allies found when they liberated the Nazi extermination camps: the survivors, the conditions, and the evidence of mass murder. The film includes accounts of the economic aspects of the camps' operation, the interrogation of captured camp personnel, and the enforced visits of the inhabitants of neighboring towns, who, along with the rest of their compatriots, are blamed for complicity in the Nazi crimes - one of the few such condemnations in the Allied war records.

Directed by Billy Wilder, Hanus Burger
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Tags: #movies #short-documentaries #decade #1940
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