This is a list of the 120 highest-ranked films on Letterboxd in the decade of the 1930s, within certain qualifications, as of 11 Feburary 2025.

To make a list like this meaningful, you need to set a threshold for numbers of ratings before including a film, mitigating the effect of spurious high ratings (including those for lost films) and helping ensure the rankings really do represent a significant consensus of viewers. The current threshold for the overall Letterboxd Top 250 is 15,000 ratings: if I imposed this, only around 40 films from the decade would qualify. So I've set a threshold of 1,000 to allow a sufficiently long and sufficiently varied list, revised up from 500 in February 2025 in line with an overall increase in the number of ratings.

Another difference from the Letterboxd 250 is that I've included shorts, documentaries and non-narrative films besides narrative features.

There are 120 titles because I figure that the world's film industry should be able to manage at least one really great film per month on average.

My personal recommendations for 150 1930s films to watch are here: boxd.it/4PAy8

This is one of a series of work-in-progress decade by decade lists along similar lines. See letterboxd.com/desdemoor/tag/highest-rated-by-decade/lists/

<- Back to 1920-1920.
-> Forward to 1940-1949.

Pedant's corner: I personally believe the 1930s began on 1 January 1931, but sadly most of the rest of the world seems to disagree with me, including Letterboxd. So to make life easier, all the films listed were released between 1930 and 1939 inclusive.

List first posted 22 March 2021.