The 40 most popular 1940s german movies, ranked. Click any film for ratings, reviews, trailers, and where to watch.

Hallo, Fräulein!

The Millionaire

Brüderlein fein


De stichter














Eine Stunde

Lambert fühlt sich bedroht










Poor Hansi

Eine große Liebe

1940s cinema is split by the war: propaganda and home-front melodrama, then the darker, more cynical film noir that followed. Italian neorealism emerged from the rubble at the decade's end.
German cinema's two great periods bookend the century: Weimar-era Expressionism, whose shadows and angles built the visual grammar of horror and noir, and the New German Cinema of the 1970s under Fassbinder, Herzog, and Wenders.