The Best Movie Of Each Year From 1925-2025

Honourable Mentions: Stagecoach, The Wizard of Oz, Gunga Din

A filmmaker with an imperious influence, Howard Hawks was one of the most prolific directors working in Hollywood as it made its transition from silent cinema to talkies, adjusted to the Hays Code, and then navigated the post-war years.

By 1939, he'd already directed a number of hits, including The Dawn Patrol, Scarface, and Bringing Up Baby, but his greatest work from that decade was Only Angels Have Wings, a romantic drama co-led by Cary Grant, Jean Arthur, and Rita Hayworth.

Centred around an airfreight company in a remote South American village and the life-or-death antics of the pilots in its employ, Only Angels Have Wings is one of Hawks' most visually breathtaking works, with the director maintaining the standard he set for aerial sequences on The Dawn Patrol through a combination of real aerial photography and clever miniature work. It also boasts a standout performance from Grant, who eschews the screwball antics of his earlier collaborations with Hawks for something much darker and inward-looking.

So many of Hawks' films were devoted to untangling the rituals of masculinity and romance, a formula he arguably perfected with 1959's Rio Bravo, but which was beautifully rendered with Only Angels Have Wings two decades earlier.