The Fallen Sparrow (1943, USA) – A veteran of the Spanish civil war tries to solve his friend’s murder. He meets a creepy Norwegian history professor whose stories about ancient torture techniques causes memories from his own torture in a Spanish prison to resurface, slowly driving him insane. Watched it all.

War of the Wildcats (1943, USA) – Ah, the good old days, when men were assholes. Watched: 11 minutes.

The Mad Ghoul (1943, USA) – A mad scientist has invented a method whereby you can make a person undead, and then, simply by transplanting a new heart into their body, make them alive again. God knows why. Watched: 12 minutes, then fast forwarded to see the ghoul, a drowsy student.

San Demetrio, London (1943, UK) – Cheerful sailors cross the Atlantic. Watched: 10 minutes.

The Heavenly Body (1943, USA) – William Powell is an uninteresting astronomer surrounded by stupid women and stupid black subordinates. Watched: 7 minutes.

Flesh and Fantasy (1943, USA) – Moderately spooky stories, told badly. Watched: 8 minutes.

Tender Comrade (1943, USA) – Makes coming home on leave to Ginger Rogers seem dull. Watched: 6 minutes.

The Cross of Lorraine (1943, USA) – French prisoners of war are sent to a Nazi labor camp, where they’re guarded by Peter Lorre. Watched: 23 minutes.

Hello Frisco, Hello (1943, USA) – The good thing about this musical is that it isn’t about the war. Watched: 6 minutes.

Gung Ho! (1943, USA) – We follow the 2nd Marine Raiders from training to their first combat on Makin Island. Their motivations for signing up are fairly unbowdlerized: One wants to impress a girl, another “just don’t like Japs”. When they’re transported by submarine, some of them panic, and the movie makes that seem okay, because submarines are scary. And when the fighting starts, it’s random and brutal. Watched it all. IMDB reviewers call it jingoistic propaganda, which is true but not relevant, and cliched, which is silly. This is a movie that defines what later becomes cliches. But it’s not realistic: The real battle of Makin Island was a near-failure, and I doubt that Japanese soldiers went into combat with an evil sneer on their face.

Mr Lucky (1943, USA) – This war is going too far. Now they’re drafting gangsters. Also, the gangster world is going too far. They’ve allowed themselves to be taken over by Cary Grant. Watched: 18 minutes.

Madame Curie (1943, USA) – “She was poor .. she was beautiful.” Science is hard, let’s look dramatically into the camera instead, while violins play in the background to underscore what an extremely Historical Person this is. Watched: 7 minutes.

The Outlaw (1943, USA) – Doc Holliday falls in love with Billy the Kid, which makes his former lover Pat Garrett jealous. I think. Watched: 14 minutes. Wikipedia says Howard Hughes invented a special bra to emphasize the breasts of the female lead, Jane Russell, so this movie swings both ways.

Yellow Canary (1943, UK) – An English woman makes everyone uncomfortable by being pro-Nazi, and possibly a traitor. She’s exiled to Canada(?!), and spies and eye-patch-wearing Nazis follow along on the trip. Best line, spoken by a rich old woman to her husband, while their boat is being boarded by Germans: “Wouldn’t it be nice to do something violent?” Watched it all.

Air Force (1943, USA) – Wholesome pilots set out for the Pacific. Watched: 8 minutes.

Thousands Cheer (1943, USA) – The patriotic war musical is a repulsive concept. Patriotic war movies can be good. So can musicals. But mix them together, and the result is quite demonic. Watched: 8 minutes, then fast-forwarded through the musical numbers, which were all spawned in the hell-pit of Satan.

The Man from Down Under (1943, USA) – An Australian soldier adopts two orphans after the Great War, because one of them is good at boxing. That seems like a unbelievable thing to do. Watched: 11 minutes.

I Walked with a Zombie (1943, USA) – I can’t figure out these old zombie movies, where the zombies are just reanimated corpses without a will of their own. This one aims for a classy feel, as if there’s a message here, possibly about slavery. Watched: 17 minutes.

Stage Door Canteen (1943, USA) – I have a horrible suspicion that those troops on the train are headed into a patriotic war musical. Dear God no! Watched: 6 minutes.

Mission to Moscow (1943, USA) – Contrary to what you have been told, Russia is nothing at all like brainwashed leader-worshipping Germany. German soldiers are buffoons, Soviet soldiers are exotic. German leaders are fanatics, Soviet leaders are kind old men with grandfather beards, honest men of integrity who want nothing but peace for the world. And the Moscow trials were fair! Based on the book by ambassador Joseph Davies, a Soviet apologist. Watched it all, because I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Somebody ought to .. er, do something about these Communists infiltrating Hollywood.

No Time for Love (1943, USA) – Claudette Colbert is an educated woman with a promising career in photography. But what she really needs in her life is a macho blue-collar worker who knows what he wants and is not afraid to take it. Watched: 24 minutes.

It’s That Man Again (1943, UK) – I suspect this may be funny in a Spike Milligan sort of way if you’re able to follow along. It’s too quick for me. Watched: 4 minutes.

Background to Danger (1943, USA) – As the announcer breathlessly informs us, the fate of the war lies not in actual battles fought by actual soldiers but in silly spy games among diplomats in neutral Turkey. Watched: 6 minutes.

Corregidor (1943, USA) – Just dreadful, but it begins Dramatically on the Philippines on December 6 1941, so I guess that makes it all okay. Watched: 3 minutes.

Sahara (1943, USA) – The wounded tank alone in the desert is an interesting movie theme. This is the second to use it. The desert here becomes a microcosmos of the war, with individual soldiers from the US, England, France, Germany and Italy meeting and fighting their own small battle in the shadow of El Alamein. Watched it all.

So Proudly We Hail (1943, USA) – Judging from the titles, at least half of the movies I have lined up for 1943 are about the war. This time some army nurses have escaped the Japanese, and one of them is depressed about it. We go into flashback mode to learn why. I don’t care. Watched: 9 minutes.

His Butler’s Sister (1943, USA) – What the butler saw only 6 minutes of.

Sugata Sanshiro (1943, Japan) – The schools of jujutsu and judo fight it out, proving that Japan was awesome even when it wasn’t. Kurosawa’s first movie. Watched it all.

Spy Train (1943, USA) – Well how good do you expect a B-movie called Spy Train to be? Watched: 6 minutes.

The Silver Fleet (1943, USA) – The brave Dutch resistance resists bravely, etc. etc. Watched: 9 minutes.

Revenge of the Zombies (1943, USA) – Zombies sure were boring back when they were just enslaved corpses. Watched: 5 minutes, then fast forwarded to see the great zombie apocalypse, but instead of ending the world the zombies become good guys and turn on their master. I strongly object.

This Land is Mine (1943, USA) – I love the idea of setting a war movie in a generic European country, in a generic occupied city with heroes and cowards, quislings and saboteurs. It gives it the character of a fable, and allows it to take unrealistic shortcuts in order to make a statement that is true on a deeper level – about what it means to live as a free people. Watched it all.

Hitler’s Madman (1943, USA) – The worst “life in occupied Europe” movie so far. Watched: 8 minutes, then fast forwarded to the end, where a village is massacred. The Nazis here are ridiculous, and yet this movie comes closer than many realistic war movies in capturing the scale of the Nazi atrocities.

Action in the North Atlantic (1943, USA) – Macho war drama about the brave men who sail the North Atlantic, men who believe in God, Roosevelt and the Brooklyn Dodgers – in that order. This is a real action movie, with explosions, narrow escapes, and sniggering Nazi schweinhunds. Watched: 29 minutes.

This is the Army (1943, USA) – There’s one foolproof way for a movie to piss me off, and that is to open with an 8 minute overture! Watched: 10 minutes longer than that, then fast forwarded through the rest: It’s two hours of soldiers singing and dancing. You know, I don’t think this is army.

A Guy Named Joe (1943, USA) – Spencer Tracy is not a believable bomber pilot. Watched: 7 minutes.

Vredens dag (1943, Denmark) – Witchcraft and adulterous lust among 17th century protestants. Perfect. I love the intro: The shadow of a cross across the words of a hymn about eternal damnation. Watched it all.

The Youngest Profession (1943, USA) – Friendly satire about screaming teenage autograph hunters. The movie stars, who here play themselves, are all very friendly, and don’t mind having long chats with fans and replying to their letters. Watched: 26 minutes.

Girl Crazy (1943, USA) – Mickey Rooney is such an obnoxious rich teenager that his father sends him away to a remote school. It doesn’t help, he’s still obnoxious. Watched: 14 minutes.

Immortal Sergeant (1943, USA) – American actors pretend to be English soldiers, and come off as neither. Watched: 6 minutes.

Titanic (1943, Germany) – The voyage of the Titanic illustrates the dangers of unrestrained capitalism. Watched 15 minutes, then fast-forwarded to see how it ends: The ship hits an ice-berg and sinks! Everybody behaves like animals, and the capitalist who is responsible for it all is acquitted by a British court. The director of this movie was hanged, but I think Goebbels overreacted.

The Constant Nymph (1943, USA) – Charles Boyer is a depressed composer. All the girls are wild about him. Watched: 11 minutes.

Dead Men Walk (1943, USA) – Tedious and cheap vampire movie. Wathced: 7 minutes.

Why We Fight, Part 1 – Prelude to War / Part 2 – The Nazis Strike (1943, USA) – One of the greatest propaganda movies of all time. It presents a vision of a free, tolerant and compassionate world, where we all share responsibility for each other’s well-being, a world with America in the centre. It’s a vision that has shaped the world ever since, particularly whenever we realize our failure to live up to it. Watched it all, but I’ll skip the next 5(!) parts.

The Human Comedy (1943, USA) – Even the hobos are happy and friendly in this happy American town, where the war teaches a teenage boy Valuable Life Lessons. Watched: 7 minutes.

We Dive at Dawn (1943, UK) – A submarine crew, nice and dull chaps every one of them, prepares for shore leave. And .. I guess I feel asleep there for a moment. Watched: 7 minutes.

Heaven Can Wait (1943, USA) – Don Ameche tells his life story at the gates of Hell to convince Satan that he belongs there. Turns out he was just a moderately bad boy who enjoyed alcohol, women and life in general, and Hell doesn’t take those kind of people any more. Watched it all.

The 7th Victim (1943, USA) – Girl looks for her missing sister. Bad writing, bad actors. Looks good, though. Watched: 5 minutes.

I Was a Fireman (1943, UK) – A tribute to the firemen who worked through the London Blitz. That’s no excuse. Watched: 4 minutes.