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The History of Cinema: 1943

Argentina - Italy

Botswana

– Miss D Murch, matron at the Lobatse government hospital, shoots a 30-minute colour silent film of British army African Pioneer Corps recruits undergoing training. [ADD]

Canada

– Paul Guevremont and Jean-Marie Poitevin’s A la croisée des chemins (At the cross roads), the first French-language talkie made in Canada is released. [ADD]

Denmark

– Annoyed by the lack of German films shown in Danish cinemas, the occupying forces insist that every other film shown at one of Denmark’s eleven premiere cinemas is German, and that second-run cinemas would show six German films every quarter.   French re-runs are stopped at the beginning of the year. [ADD]

Germany

Josef von Baky’s Munchhausen is released.   Instigated by Nazi propaganda minister Josef Goebbels, who wished to celebrate UFA’s 25^th anniversary, the Agfacolor production, starring Hans Albers in the title role, took three years to make. [ADD]

Greece

– Film producer Filopoimin Finos and his father are arrested by the Nazis as members of the resistance.   Finos is later released, but his father is executed in July 1944. [ADD]

Holland

– The anti-semitic Van den vos Reynaerde (About Reynard the Fox), the first colour animated film made in Holland, is completed by Nederland Film.   The film is never shown publicly, and only a few fragments survive the war. [ADD]

– There are 409 cinemas in the country, an increase from 363 in 1939. [ADD]

India

The government rations unexposed negatives and all advertising films are prohibited as British sources of supply become uncertain due to the war. [ADD]

– Gyan Mukerji’s Kismet (Fate), the first Hindi film to feature an anti-hero is released.   It runs for over three years at the Roxy Cinema in Calcutta, and becomes one of the biggest hits in the history of Indian cinema. [ADD]

– A shortage of raw film stock due to the war results in the length of feature films being restricted to 11,000 feet. [ADD]

Iran

– Dubbing studios proliferate, as Hollywood films dominate and much of the Iranian population is illiterate and therefore unable to read subtitles. [ADD]

Italy

16/4 -

Fascist authorities seize and destroy the negatives of Luchino Visconti’s Ossessione.   The director, however, manages to save a print. [ADD]

16/5 -

Ossessione, 36-year-old aristocrat Luchino Visconti’s first feature is released.   Based without acknowledgement on American pulp writer James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice, the film is labeled neo-realist by critic Antonio Pietrangeli three years before the movement really begins.   It stars Massimo Girotti, Clara Calamai and Juan de Landa in a deadly love triangle. [ADD]

9/9

Studios are closed and the shooting of two films, Marcel Carne’s Les Enfants du paradis and Yves Allegret’s La Boite aux reves, is interrupted because of military battles in Italy. [ADD]

30/10 -

23-year-old screenwriter Federico Fellini marries actress Giulietta Masina in Rome [ADD]

Other Key Films of 1943

Argentina

Safo (Carlos Hugo Christensen) [ADD]

Canada

Proudly She Marches [ADD]

The War for Men’s Minds (Stuart Legg) [ADD]

Colombia

Alla en el trapiche (Roberto Saa Silva) [ADD]

Sendero de luz (Emilio Correa Alvarez) [ADD]

Denmark

Vredens Dag (Day of Wrath) (Carl Theodor Dreyer) [ADD]

Greece

I foni tis kardias (The Voice of the Heart) (Dimitris Ioannopoulos) [ADD]

Hungary

Magyar sasok (István László) [ADD]

Egy gép nem tért vissza (A Machine Has Not Returned) (Ágoston Pacséry). [ADD]

Egy nap a világ (One Day is the World) (János Vaszary) [ADD]

Kölcsönadott élet (Lent Life) (Viktor Bánky) [ADD]

Viharbrigád (Storm Brigade) (István Lázár Jr) [ADD]

India

Kanoon [ADD]

Ram Rajya (Vijay Bhatt) [ADD]

Shakuntala (Rajaram Vankudre Shantaram) [ADD]

Tansen (Jeyant Desai) [ADD]

Wapas [ADD]

The History of Cinema: 1943