my favorite movies of 1943:

(1) Meshes of the Afternoon

(2) Stormy Weather

(3) Shadow of a Doubt

favorite of 1943:

Meshes of the Afternoon

(Maya Deren, Alexandr Hackenschmied. Directed by Deren and Hackenschmied.)

This is in the public domain, so you can watch it free on YouTube:

A woman (played by one of the co-directors, Maya Deren) has a disorienting dream where the ordinary objects she’s encountered during her day (a key, a flower, etc.) become charged with new significance, the place where she lives feels like an inescapable maze, and death seems to be lurking around corners. At first glance this 13-minute short might seem random and plotless, but rewatch it and you might start to see it differently.

Meshes of the Afternoon seems to be an evolution from Ménilmontant (one of my favorite movies of 1926), another short, dialogue-free silent movie that explores a woman’s mental state. But Meshes of the Afternoon doesn’t feel like a quaint homage to the silent era; it feels prophetic, pointing the way to much later experiments: the surrealism of Louis Malle’s Zazie dans le Métro (one of my favorites of 1960), the personal quest that involves confronting mortality in Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries (one of my favorites of 1957), David Lynch’s work especially Mulholland Drive (2001), and even MTV music videos.

Fun fact: Meshes of the Afternoon is the shortest movie on this list of “my favorite movies of each year from 1920 to 2020.”

In addition to watching it on YouTube (see above), you can also stream a high-quality version on the Criterion Channel. (Try a free trial if you don’t subscribe.)

2nd favorite of 1943:

Stormy Weather

(Lena Horne, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, Cab Calloway, Dooley Wilson, Fats Waller, Ada Brown. Directed by Andrew L. Stone.)

While the story’s nothing special, the whole movie is worth watching to see the stunning musical and dance performances in their full context, not just as isolated YouTube clips. But here’s one: Lena Horne singing the title song, “Stormy Weather.” This is only part of that number, not the extended version in the movie which takes us out into the storm …

(How to stream Stormy Weather.)

3rd favorite of 1943:

Shadow of a Doubt

(Teresa Wright, Joseph Cotten, Henry Travers, Hume Cronyn. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock.)

One of Hitchcock’s favorite Hitchcock movies.

He thought the world was a horrible place. … He didn’t trust people, seemed to hate them, hated the whole world. You know, he said that people like us had no idea what the world was really like.

Well, it’s not quite as bad as that. But sometimes it needs a lot of watching. Seems to go crazy every now and then.

You can stream Shadow of a Doubt on the Criterion Channel (try a free trial) or these sites.

Click here for the full list of my favorite movie(s) of each year from 1920 to 2020.