1001 films you must see before you die- Part IV: 1940-1944

Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) is a short experimental film directed by wife and husband team, Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid. The film's narrative is circular, and repeats a number of psychologically symbolic images, including a flower on a long driveway, a key falling, a door unlocked, a knife in a loaf of bread, a mysterious Grim Reaper-like cloaked figure with a mirror for a face, a phone off the hook and an ocean.
The film was the product of Deren's and Hammid's desire to create an avant garde personal film that dealt with devastating psychological problems, like the French avant-garde films of the 1920s such as Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel's Un Chien Andalou (1929) and L'Age d'Or (1930). Deren's use of symbolism in her films relates to her father's preoccupation with psychology and her desire to appeal to her father's interests.

Fires Were Started (1943) is a British film written and directed by Humphrey Jennings, filmed in documentary style showing the lives of firemen through the Blitz in World War II. The film uses actual firemen (including Cyril Demarne) rather than professional actors.
The film was also released under the title I Was a Fireman.

The Man in Grey is a 1943 English film melodrama made by Gainsborough Pictures, and is widely considered as the first of its "Gainsborough melodramas" (a series of period costume dramas). It was directed by Leslie Arliss and produced by Edward Black from a screenplay by Leslie Arliss and Margaret Kennedy, adapted by Doreen Montgomery from the novel by Eleanor Smith.
It starred Margaret Lockwood, Phyllis Calvert, James Mason, Stewart Granger and Martita Hunt, and melded together elements of the successful "women's pictures" of the time with distinct new elements.