Christmas in July (1940)

Comedy. An office clerk is tricked by coworkers into believing he has won $25,000 in a coffee slogan contest, and spends like a winner before anyone realizes the telegram was a prank. Preston Sturges wrote and directed it right after The Great McGinty, and at 67 minutes it is the quickest watch here. What makes it sting is that the fortune never existed: the clerk's job, engagement and neighborhood all change on the strength of a belief. Sturges asks whether being treated as a winner is worth as much as the money itself, and lands on an answer both kind and cutting.