Has anyone seen The 49th Parallel? It’s a propaganda film about a German U-boat trapped in Canada, and the crew’s efforts to reach the then-neutral United States. I’ve not seen it.
I aw it on tv a long time ago - probably 20+ years - and remember very little about it now!
I did quite enjoy it. At the end, iirc,
the remaining Germans made a break for a river which marked the border; some died in the torrent and the Canadian soldiers pursuing (whom they had escaped from, and had gotten to know) chose not to shoot the remaining survivor. But I could be wrong, after all these years!
I saw it a few weeks ago. Lawrence Olivier is silly as a French Canadian, It kind of drags when they get to Leslie Howard living in the teepee, and Raymond Massey is great as the AWOL hoboe who takes action. I wished they’d made it more of a tight chase movie and less of a travelogue of culturally diverse Canada all confronting the Nazi menace.
I wouldn’t characterize it as propaganda, though it obviously as an anti-Nazi orientation, because it develops characters on both sides and doesn’t brush the bad guys in too many broad strokes (since the film follows them, and not a single “good guy”). It also shows a variety of attitudes and perspectives of the people the infiltrators meet, which I’d argue is a strength of the film, not a weakness, because suspense is generated by seeing how successful (or not) the Germans will fit in as “regular people” as they cross the country (infinitely more interesting than another “chase” movie). There is some speechifying (inevitable with Howard & Olivier), but still well worth seeing on an entertainment level, not just a historical curiosity.
And I’m pretty sure Meruglys as the ending completely wrong.
Michael Powell himself seems to have been quite comfortable with a description of the film as propaganda. In A Life in Movies he discusses at some length how he pitched the idea to both Duff Cooper in the Ministry of Information - who helped put up the budget - and the Canadian authorities in such terms. The aim was to help bring the US into the war and, in the meantime, promote greater security along the border.
Of course, it’s not crude propaganda comparable to what Goebbels was churning out. The humanising of the Germans was deliberate. According to Powell, his pitch started:
You should definitely watch it Johnny. I find that the episodic structure makes it the most uneven of the wartime Powell and Pressburger films that I’ve seen, but it’s an important film by a pair of great filmmakers.
And I agree that that’s not the ending.
Could you or ArchiveGuy maybe correct my apparently wrong memory - it was a long time ago…
The ending:
The party is gradually whittled down until it’s only the main Nazi, played by Eric Portman, left. He tries to cross the border at Niagara by hiding on a goods train. But also hiding in the boxcar is Raymond Massey, who rumbles him as the train crosses the big spectacular bridge and so he gets captured by the Canadian and US border guards.
Some Oscar Trivia:
Emeric Pressburger is the only person to receive 3 writing nominations in the same year–two of them for this movie (Screenplay and Story; he won for the latter).
Thanks, bonzer, I don’t know what I was remembering…
Sorry for the mis-information.
Well, your ending has a superficial relationship to the finale of the 1937 filmLa Grande Illusion by Jean Renoir, in that two escapees do cross the border (in the snow) and the pursuing Germans, upon seeing them on the other side, decide to not shoot at them but to let them go.