Greatest Single Year in Movie History?

[toef]

Instead of the more typical "best decade" debates (in which opinions generally seem split between the 1970s and whatever the current decade is), how about debating the best single year in movie history?

I know that a lot of film historians consider 1939 to be the height of the Golden Age of Hollywood, and plenty of film buffs/cinephiles would agree that it was the best year in movies.

For a humorous yet informative look at 1939, here's an excerpt from a book by famous screenwriter/author William Goldman:

You probably don't remember the Oscar winner for '39, but let me list five movies and then you guess:

Golden Boy
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Intermezzo
Juarez
The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex

To help you along, a few refreshers: Golden Boy introduced us to William Holden; Intermezzo to Ingrid Bergman. Charles Laughton played the Hunchback, Paul Muni starred in Juarez, and Bette Davis was Elizabeth, one of her more famous performances.

The envelope please...

[Show spoiler]

Answer? None of the five. In fact, none of the five even got a Best Picture nomination. But here are the five that did:

Goodbye, Mr. Chips
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Ninotchka
Of Mice and Men
Stagecoach

Again, please, the envelope...

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Same answer: none of the above. (They nominated more than five pictures back in those days.) And one of the five I didn't list was Wuthering Heights.

Which also didn't win, because '39 was also the year of The Wizard of Oz.

Which also didn't win because Gone With the Wind did.

Pretty impressive year.

So what do you think. If not 1939, then what year was the single greatest in movie history, and why?