Michael Powell's 1941 WWII propaganda movie "49th Parallel"(from a story and a screenplay by Emeric Pressburger) about a ruthless Nazi submarine officer, Lieutenant Kuhnecker (Eric Portman) trying to escape across Canada to the US (then not in the war) had the startling effect of making me root for him to evade capture. Nasty as he is—and he is very nasty, indeed— there's something about the eleven million-to-one odds that appeals to those who root for underdogs (I similarly feel almost sorry for child-murderer Peter Lorre being hunted down in "M").

The movie has five acts. The first is the lively action one with U-boat-37 first a hunter of ships setting off for England from Canada (operating in the mouth of the St. Lawrence River) and then as the hunted one that flees into Hudson Bay. A group is sent ashore to forage and the submarine is sink (not a single bomb dropped by the Canadian Air Force is anything other than a direct hit). The foraging patrol invades a Hudson Bay Company outpost with an Inuit (then called "Eskimo") village adjoining it. The company manager's house provides a microcosm for the solidarity of the main groups of Canadians (whose unity and shared commitment to fighting the Nazis was the purpose of the film, financed by the British Ministry of Information with writer Emeric Pressburger determined to teach Josef Goebbels a thing or two about effective propaganda. . The kindly branch manager (Factor, played by (Finlay Currie) is an English Canadian ham-radio enthusiast who plays chess over it three nights a week. He is hosting a French Canadian hunter/trapper (another kind of ham, Laurence Olivier with a broad accent) who had not heard there was a war on , and his devoted Inuit assistant (Ley On). The Nazi lieutenant tries to appeal to French separatist feeling without any success and there is a massacre of Inuits. (Yet Powell had to defend himself from portraying the Nazis as too sympathetic...)

After stealing an airplane that crashes after it runs out of fuel, the survivors are sheltered in a Hutterite community, that refuses appeal to German origins and nationalism (Anton Walbrook has a big speech on loyalty to the new country). This is followed by an interlude in Winnipeg (with the Germans near starvation, assaulted by flashing neon) that is very reminiscent of Fritz Lang movies with threatening lights and a trek on foot (with a Calgary Stampede bit reminiscent of "The 39 Steps"). Walking undetected from Winnipeg through Calgary into the Canadian Rockies does not seem to wear the shoe-leather at all, and their clothes stay remarkably crisp.

Lost at the edge of a lake, the ungrateful Germans returning hospitality with malice again, after being rescued and fed by a pompous, verbose, and generally prissy collector of First Nations (Native American) folklore. Lieutenant Kuhnecker expresses contempt for the cowardly aesthete and Leslie Howard demonstrates that he packs a punch.

It would seem to me easy to cross the unguarded border between Watertown National Park in Alberta and Glacier National Park in Montana (with bears presenting the primary danger), but the story/escape veers east.

There is more declamation in the last section with Raymond Massey playing a deserter whose patriotism is rekindled by the Nazi and who concocts an ironic ending once his speechifying is over. (Massey gives Olivier a run for the money for the most over-ripe hamminess in the movie).

The movie has its moments of brilliance, but is a long, propagandistic slog aiming to unite Canadians to aid the UK with greater enthusiasm and to increase US sympathies with the British fighting the Third Reich (without demonizing all Germans—indeed one is quite a sympathetic character (a baker played by Niall MacGinnis, who had starred in Powell's breakthrough The Edge of the World) and begins a romance with a devout young woman, Anna (the then-unknown Glynis Johns).

There is some excellent cinematography by Freddie Young and original music by Ralph Vaughan William (his first film score, sharing a northern focus with his greatest, for the 1948 "Scott of the Antarctic"). David Lean was the editor (already running movies over two hours back then), as he was for the Powell/Pressburger "One of Our Aircraft Is Missing" the next year and for Noël Coward's "In Which We Serve," after which he made something of a name for himself directing movies. Freddie Young won Oscars for photographing three of them: Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, and Ryan's Daughter.

BTW, the villain manages to get below the 45th parallel, but the border of eastern Canada is further south than that (the 49th parallel is the US/Canada border in the west, the attempted crossing is of the border at the Niagara River).

As is often the case, the "best available" print used for the transfer was none too good. The story for the movie was Pressburger an Oscar. The movie was nominated for best picture and best screenplay as well. It was the highest-grossing movie in the UK in 1942 and the highest-grossing British film to that date in the United States. I don't know if it united Canada or increased US support for getting into the war.



Recommended:
No