The Best Movies: 1943

The 10 Best Movies of 1943

1. The Ox-Bow Incident. Directed by William A. Wellman. Henry Fonda, Dana Andrews. One of the best Westerns ever made and a powerful indictment of mob violence. Wellman did something interesting with this film. Although he shot the beginning of the film with realistic looking Western exteriors, the bulk was shot on a set giving it an eerily claustrophobic feel that adds to the sense of tragedy inherent in the story. This was easily the best film in a somewhat lackluster year for movies.

2. The More the Merrier. Directed by George Stevens. Jean Arthur, Joel McCrea, Charles Coburn. A wonderful comedy with terrific performances. Stevens was the perfect choice to direct this film, which mostly takes place in the small confines a single apartment. The more tension he builds in that tiny space, the funnier the film gets. All three leads are superb, but Coburn steals every scene he’s in.

3. Shadow of a Doubt. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Teresa Wright, Joseph Cotten, Macdonald Carey. This is said to be Hitchcock’s personal favorite among all the films he directed. Not as creepy as most of his works, but it is still a fascinating character study of a mass murderer, portrayed brilliantly by Cotten. Hitch’s greatest achievement was to convince Thornton Wilder to write the screenplay, correctly thinking that the author of Our Town would perfectly capture the Americana ambiance Hitchcock wanted.

4. For Whom the Bell Tolls. Directed by Sam Wood. Gary Cooper, Ingrid Bergman, Akim Tamiroff. After the first three films on the list, the quality drops considerably. Cooper makes a fairly decent Hemingway hero, but otherwise this film is stuck in neutral for too long. There are persistent rumors that people associated with Franco in Spain as well as the Catholic Church pressured the studio to make this film apolitical. It is. The reasons this film ranks this high are is its superb action scenes, its majestic color photography and a wonderful score from Victor Young.

5. Destination Tokyo. Directed by Delmer Davies. Cary Grant, John Garfield, Alan Hale. A fairly decent, action-packed World War II story that features one major embarrassment, a scene in which Grant’s character writes a letter to his family back home. It becomes a propaganda piece (the Japanese and Germans are really evil, the Russians and Chinese are really nice folks) that has thankfully been removed from many of the existing prints of the picture.

6. Five Graves to Cairo. Directed by Billy Wilder. Franchot Tone, Anne Baxter, Akim Tamiroff, Erich von Stroheim. A shamefully over-looked suspenseful thriller featuring von Stroheim’s brilliant portrayal of German Field Marshal Rommel. Brittle dialogue delivered expertly by everyone involved. This is another movie that's difficult to find on Region 1 DVD.

7. Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. Directed by Roy William Neill. Lon Chaney Jr., Patric Knowles. This is actually more fun than its campy title would lead you to believe. Some interesting trivia here. Bela Lugosi, who turned down the role of Frankenstein’s Monster in the original film because he didn’t have any dialogue, plays the Monster here who is both mute and blind.

8. Sherlock Holmes Faces Death. Directed by Roy William Neill. Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce. One of the best films in the Sherlock Holmes series featuring a neat scene in which Holmes has all the suspects act as pieces in chess game, a technique that has been copied many times since. Neill, who also directed the Frankenstein film above, shows his penchant for horror films throughout, especially in a scene filmed in an underground crypt, the same set that was used as Dracula’s home in the 1931 film.

9. The Outlaw. Directed by Howard Hughes. Jane Russell, Walter Huston, Thomas Mitchell. This film (which never made it into wide release until 1946) is known for two reasons — Russell’s breasts. And Hughes, in one of the most brilliant film marketing efforts of the era, made sure everyone was aware of them. The movie itself, a sloppy retelling of the Billy the Kid story, is rather amateurish.

10. Sherlock Holmes in Washington. Directed by Roy William Neill. Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Marjorie Lord, Henry Daniell. The last of the World War II propaganda Holmes films. Notice how the detective’s looks are altered in this film to fit its American setting.