Best Drama Movies of 1947

Jeff Bailey seems to be a mundane gas station owner in remote Bridgeport, CA. He is dating local girl Ann Miller and lives a quiet life. But Jeff has a secret past, and when a mysterious stranger arrives in town, Jeff is forced to return to the dark world he had tried to escape.

Kris Kringle, seemingly the embodiment of Santa Claus, is asked to portray the jolly old fellow at Macy's following his performance in the Thanksgiving Day parade. His portrayal is so complete that many begin to question if he truly is Santa Claus, while others question his sanity.

A group of Anglican nuns, led by Sister Clodagh, are sent to a mountain in the Himalayas. The climate in the region is hostile and the nuns are housed in an odd old palace. They work to establish a school and a hospital, but slowly their focus shifts. Sister Ruth falls for a government worker, Mr. Dean, and begins to question her vow of celibacy. As Sister Ruth obsesses over Mr. Dean, Sister Clodagh becomes immersed in her own memories of love.

A romantic drifter gets caught between a corrupt tycoon and his voluptuous wife.

A man convicted of murdering his wife escapes from prison and works with a woman to try and prove his innocence.

Stanton Carlisle joins a seedy carnival, working with "Mademoiselle Zeena" and her alcoholic husband, Pete.

An Episcopal Bishop, Henry Brougham, has been working for months on the plans for an elaborate new cathedral which he hopes will be paid for primarily by a wealthy, stubborn widow. He is losing sight of his family and of why he became a churchman in the first place. Enter Dudley, an angel sent to help him. Dudley does help everyone he meets, but not necessarily in the way they would have preferred. With the exception of Henry, everyone loves him, but Henry begins to believe that Dudley is there to replace him, both at work and in his family's affections, as Christmas approaches.

A magazine writer poses as a Jew to expose anti-Semitism.

The beautiful Mrs. Paradine is accused of poisoning her older, blind husband. She hires married Anthony Keane as her lawyer and when he begins to fall in love with her, she encourages him.

Belfast police conduct a door-to-door manhunt for an IRA gunman wounded in a daring robbery.

Timeworn Joe Collins and his fellow inmates live under the heavy thumb of the sadistic, power-tripping guard Captain Munsey. Only Collins' dreams of escape keep him going, but how can he possibly bust out of Munsey's chains?

An ex-con trying to go straight must face a crazed criminal out for revenge.

A con man tries to blackmail a Mexican gangster.

A man is murdered, apparently by one of a group of soldiers just out of the army. But which one? And why?

Charley Davis, against the wishes of his mother, becomes a boxer. As he becomes more successful the fighter becomes surrounded by shady characters, including an unethical promoter named Roberts, who tempt the man with a number of vices. Charley finds himself faced with increasingly difficult choices.

A classical musician from a working class background is sidetracked by his love for a wealthy, neurotic socialite.

Society sleuths Nick and Nora Charles investigate a murder in a jazz club.

In a quiet Connecticut town, a kindly priest is murdered while waiting at a street corner. The citizens are horrified and demand action from the police. All of the witnesses identify John Waldron, a nervous out-of-towner, as the killer. Although Waldron vehemently denies the crime, no one will believe him. District Attorney Henry Harvey is then put on the case and faces political opposition in his attempt to prove Waldron's innocence. Based on a true story.

After being found wandering the streets of Los Angeles, a severely catatonic woman tells a doctor the complex story of how she wound up there.

Helen Brent has just received a Reno divorce. That night, she discovers her neighbor Laury Palmer and a gentleman caller murdered in Palmer's home. The killer is her neighbor's other boyfriend Sam Wilde, an insanely jealous man who won't abide anyone "cutting in" on him.

Sheltered by her conservative parents, a small-town teenager finally goes out on a date.

A boy haunted by nightmares about the night his entire family was murdered is brought up by a neighboring family in the 1880s. He falls for his lovely adoptive sister but his nasty adoptive brother and mysterious uncle want him dead.

The secretary of an affably suave radio mystery host mysteriously commits suicide after his wealthy young niece disappears.

On trial for murdering his girlfriend, philandering stockbroker Larry Ballentine takes the stand to claim his innocence and describe the actual, but improbable sounding, sequence of events that led to her death.

After being framed for a policeman's murder, a criminal escapes prison and sets out for revenge.

In a long flashback, a New York publisher is in Venice pursuing the lost love letters of an early-19th-century poet, Jeffrey Ashton, who disappeared mysteriously. Using a false name, Lewis Venable rents a room from Juliana Bordereau, once Jeffrey Ashton's lover, now an aged recluse. Running the household is Juliana's severe niece, Tina, who mistrusts Venable from the first moment. He realizes all is not right when late one night he finds Tina, her hair unpinned and wild, at the piano. She calls him Jeffrey and throws herself at him. The family priest warns Venable to tread carefully around her fantasies, but he wants the letters at any cost, even Tina's sanity.

Leopold Kroner, formerly of Colby Enterprises, is released after five years in prison for embezzlement. Andrew Colby, claiming that Kroner has threatened him, hires lawyer Bob Regan as a secret bodyguard. Sure enough, Kroner turns up in Colby's room with a gun, and Regan kills him. Then Regan, who sticks around to romance Colby's secretary Noel, begins to suspect he's been used.

Bootleggers on the lamb Frankie and Noll split up to evade capture by the police. Frankie is caught and jailed, but Noll manages to escape and open a posh New York City nightclub. 14 years later, Frankie is released from the clink and visits Noll with the intention of collecting his half of the nightclub's profits. But Noll, who has no intention of being so equitable, uses his ex-girlfriend Kay to divert Frankie from his intended goal.

A Shakespearian actor starring as Othello opposite his wife finds the character's jealous rage taking over his mind off-stage.

During a rainy Sunday afternoon, an escaped prisoner tries to hide out at the home of his ex-fiance.

Sandra Carpenter is a London-based dancer who is distraught to learn that her friend has disappeared. Soon after the disappearance, she's approached by Harley Temple, a police investigator who believes her friend has been murdered by a serial killer who uses personal ads to find his victims. Temple hatches a plan to catch the killer using Sandra as bait, and Sandra agrees to help.

When an employee at an illegal gambling den dies suspiciously, her sister, Nancy, looks into the situation and falls for Johnny O'Clock, a suave partner in the underground casino. Selfish and non-committal by nature, Johnny slowly begins to return Nancy's affection and decides to run away with her, but conflict within his business threatens their plans. As Johnny tries to distance himself from the casino, his shady past comes back to haunt him.

Struggling artist Geoffrey Carroll meets Sally while on holiday in the country. A romance develops, but he doesn't tell her he's already married. Suffering from mental illness, Geoffrey returns home where he paints an impression of his wife as the angel of death and then promptly poisons her. He marries Sally but after a while he finds a strange urge to paint her as the angel of death too and history seems about to repeat itself.

Truck driver Mike Lambert is a down-and-out mining engineer searching for a job. When his rig breaks down in a small town, he happens upon a venomous seductress. When her boyfriend robs a bank, they intend to frame Lambert.

A beautician and her crooked boyfriend attempt to rob the bookie operation located in the back room, but when the plan goes wrong, they frame an innocent man.

A World War II veteran wants to return to advertising on his own terms, but finds it difficult to be successful and maintain his integrity.

Fritz Lang’s psycho thriller tells the story of a woman who marries a stranger with a deadly hobby and through their love he attempts to fight off his obsessive-compulsive actions.

Steven Kenet, suffering from a recurring brain injury, appears to have strangled his wife. Having confessed, he's committed to an understaffed county asylum full of pathetic inmates. There, Dr. Ann Lorrison is initially skeptical about Kenet's story and reluctance to undergo treatment. But against her better judgement, she begins to doubt his guilt.

Daisy Kenyon is a Manhattan commercial artist having an affair with an arrogant and overbearing but successful lawyer named Dan O'Mara. O'Mara is married and has children. Daisy meets a single man, a war veteran named Peter Lapham, and after a brief and hesitant courtship decides to marry him, although she is still in love with Dan.

Jim Ackland, who suffers from a head injury sustained in a bus crash , is the chief suspect in a murder hunt, when a girl that he has just met is found dead on the local common, and he has no alibi for the time she was killed.

Quiet, organised Dr Talbot meets nightclub singer Nora Prentiss when she is slightly hurt in a street accident. Despite her misgivings they become heavily involved and Talbot finds he is faced with the choice of leaving Nora or divorcing his wife. When a patient expires in his office, a third option seems to present itself.

A St. Louis woman marries a New Mexico cattleman who is seen as a tyrant by the locals.

An old man and his sister are concealing a terrible secret from their adopted teen daughter, concerning a hidden abandoned farmhouse, located deep in the woods.

England, 1763. After being convicted of a crime, the young and beautiful Abigail Hale agrees, to escape the gallows, to serve fourteen years as a slave in the colony of Virginia, whose inhabitants begin to hear and fear the sinister song of the threatening drums of war that resound in the wild Ohio valley.

Sophie loved Edmund, but he left town when her parents forced her to marry wealthy Octavius. Years later, Edmund returns with his son, William. Sophie's daughter, Marguerite, and William fall in love. Marguerite's sister, Marianne, also loves William. Timothy, a lowly carpenter, secretly loves Marianne. He kills a man in a fight, and Edmund helps him flee to New Zealand. William deserts inadvertently from the navy, and also flees in disgrace to New Zealand, where he and Timothy start a profitable business. One night, drunk, William writes Octavius, demanding his daughter's hand; but, being drunk, he asks for the wrong sister.

Broadway star, Sheila Page, shoots Barney, her murderous husband on New Year's Eve. She flees her apartment and goes to her producer, John Friday. When she arrives, it is New Year's day, a year earlier. She has been given the chance to live life over and correct the errors of the past only to find that the end will be the same although the path will be different.

Fireworks revolves around a young man (played by Anger himself) associating with various navy sailors, who eventually turn on him, stripping him naked and beating him to death, ripping open his chest to find a clock ticking inside. Several fireworks then explode, accompanied by a burning Christmas tree and the final shot shows the young man lying in bed next to another topless man.

Christine Hunter kills an intruder and tells her husband and lawyer that it was an act of self-defense. It's later revealed that he was actually her lover and she had posed for an incriminating statue he created.

The daughter of a Nevada casino owner gets involved with a racketeer, despite everyone's efforts to separate them.