49th Parallel - Criterion Collection (1942)

Powell & Pressburgerlicious

With the advent of Criterion releasing so many Powell/Pressburger colaborations to video, I've become a real fan of their stuff and 49th Parallel is no exception.

The story involves the activities of a group of fugitive German soldiers crossing Canada during World War II who try to evade capture while spreading the word of 'der Fuehrer'. While the premise doesn't sound all that original considering the propagandistic output of the film industry at the time, the script and performances make this film one of the best. The photography in certain scenes borders on the expressionistic with great visuals of Canada in all its natural glory. The acting is right on the mark and contains segments featuring great canadian and british actors of the '40's.....Anton Walbrook, Olivier, Raymond Massey, Glynnis Johns, Leslie Howard.

Filmed in black and white it may lack some of the intensity of Black Narcissus, but the print is good and the story even better.
November 9, 2007

Wonderful as anti-Nazi propaganda but failed as film

Powell and Pressburger made great films, they were artists of the art of cinema. I am the first to regret to write this but the well-intentioned aim of the film: to rouse anti-Nazi feelings in America in order to help the British against the German nazis poses too much stress on the film itself.

The cast is great, great actors; great scenery. As propaganda it is hardly possible to do a better job in exposing what Nazism means and its implications in our daily lives (religious and civil liberties), and it brings to bear in mind the lucky we free peoples are in our imperfect democracies, so we can appreciate our freedoms more. But again, this aim is too stressed, it becomes too obvious in the dialogues and all through the film. September 6, 2007

Nazis on the Run Across Canada in an Episodic, Pip-Pip Propaganda Epic

The Criterion Collection saw fit to release this 1941 British propaganda film in an elaborate two-disc set, but the circumstances behind the production are actually more interesting than the resulting film showcased in a fine print on the 2007 disc. In their third collaboration, director Michael Powell and screenwriter Eric Pressburger were requested by the British Government's Ministry of Information to make a movie that would encourage the U.S. to join the Allied forces to defeat the Nazis, all this months prior to Pearl Harbor. As it stands, the film serves as a piercing if somewhat dogmatic indictment of the absolutist Nazi rhetoric and the simple-minded brutality borne out of it. The title refers to the border between the U.S. and Canada, which is immediately identified by the narrator as "the only undefended frontier in the world".

Enter a German U-boat, which gets sunk in Canadian waters, while six Nazi soldiers look for food and supplies on land. Suddenly stranded in a country not only alien to them but also hostile to their point of view, the rest of the plot is about how these men attempt to find a way to get out of Canada and back to Germany. They make their way westward meeting various people who react to their presence in divergent ways. The film's most intriguing and challenging aspect is how the soldiers are presented in various shades of fanaticism from the uncompromising zealot, Lieutenant Hirth, to the passive resistance of Vogel, who wants to abandon the cause to become a baker. The episodic structure accommodates several famous stars in condensed roles, the most familiar being Laurence Olivier as a French-Canadian fur-trapper and Leslie Howard as a reclusive aesthete. Olivier's cameo is particularly shameless with an overripe accent that portends the hamminess of his twilight career roles, while Howard's has a touch of ironic poignancy given his death from a German fighter attack soon after production was completed.

The most interesting passage occurs when the soldiers happen upon a Hutterite farming community in Manitoba, an Amish-like oasis of pacifist civility that must have served as the inspiration for Peter Weir's "Witness". Eric Portman plays the soulless Hirth with a barely concealed rage and a wavering Teutonic accent, while Niall MacGinniss subtly shows the inner conflict of a man having doubts about the necessity of a master race. Long before Mary Poppins and While You Were Sleeping, Glynis Johns, all of 17, affectingly plays a naïve Hutterite girl intrigued by the soldiers. There is evidence of Powell's and Pressburger's compelling cinematic style in various shots (like the plane crash sequence), and revered British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams composed the atmospheric score that beautifully underlines much of the action.

For all its good intentions, however, the film is compromised by a narrative that rarely inspires and other than the Nazi portrayals, characters that often seem cardboard-thin. Film historian Bruce Eder provides academic commentary on an alternate track on the first disc, while the second disc consists of three major components. The first is a 46-minute short, "The Volunteer", starring Ralph Richardson as himself as he shows a theater dresser preparing to entering military service. The second is an hour-long audio tape of Powell narrating parts of his autobiography, and the final piece is an entertaining hour-long 1981 documentary about Powell and Pressburger, although unfortunately it bypasses production of this film entirely. July 1, 2007

49th Parallel

Also known as "The Invaders," and co-scripted by Powell's longtime partner Emeric Pressburger, this clever, rousing anti-fascist war thriller was one of Britain's boldest and most memorable propaganda pictures. Portman is mesmerizing as the wicked, hate-spouting Lt. Hirth, Walbrook, Howard, and Olivier (despite the heavy Quebecois accent) are uniformly excellent, and the distinguished Raymond Massey is also on-hand playing cynical AWOL soldier Andy Brock. Powell even brings a documentary-like intensity to the sequences filmed in Indian and Hutterite communities. Absorbing on many levels, "Parallel" is a soul-stirring drama that recaptures a tumultuous time. June 25, 2007

how many americans today realize it took us more than 2 years to enter the "good" war?

the first of the powell-pressburger classics (the decade would see them go on to "the red shoes", "black narcissus", "tales of hoffman", and several others) is an episodic tale which counts as much as agitprop as a film. made partly to encourage americas entry into ww2, the film details the attempt of a stranded nazi u-boat crew in canada trying to make its way safely to the then-neutral united states. eric portman is the nazi captain (eerily presaging his role two decades later in "the bedford incident") who runs into (and up against) the likes of laurence olivier (hilariously hammy as a french canadian trapper), anton walbrook, leslie howard, and raymond massey. the movie is suspenseful and an oddity in that it has you most identifying with portman, its main character -- and a HIGHLY unsympathetic one at that. in such, its almost akin to "dr strangelove" where you found yourself rooting for the crew of the plane about to launch ww3! im not sure how effective this was as agitprop, but it IS a terrific movie (& oh, btw, the nazis DO get their just comeuppance thanks to good ol' canadian knowhow!)
May 12, 2007

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