-screenshot.jpg "49th parallel")
The movie is careful not to present its Germans as vicious Huns. The movie was made for the express purpose of influencing American public opinion. So Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger do a wartime thriller on a larger scale than their previous The Spy in Black and Contraband, this time sublimating their personal agenda to the war effort. It is late 1940 and an embattled England desperately needs the stubbornly isolationist United States to come into the fray. Canadian soldier, Andy Brock (Raymond Massey).Ĥ9th Parallel is remarkable from many angles, even though it is less of an artistic achievement than most of their other films. But he seriously underestimates the patriotism of an A.W.O.L. Finally fleeing alone, Hirth manages to steal aboard a freight car headed across the U.S.
Hirth comes upon Philip Armstrong Scott (Leslie Howard) an intellectual vacationing on a Canadian lake, and accuses him of being a decadent coward. The group murders its way to Banff, where the Mounties and Native Americans assist in another capture during an Indian Day celebration. Nazi sailor Vogel (Niall MacGinnis) attempts to stay behind as the community's new baker, but Hirth has a predictably hostile reaction. Hirth thinks he is among comrades when they come upon an agrarian Hutterite community run by the kindly German expatriate Peter (Anton Walbrook), but the fundamentalist Christians want nothing to do with them. The plane takes them only so far and their numbers dwindle when they are forced to cross Canada on foot. They seize supplies at an Inuit trading post, striking down French Canadian trapper Johnnie (Laurence Olivier) and stealing a seaplane. Nazi idealist naval Lieutenant Hirth (Eric Portman) and five sailors are stranded in Hudson's bay when the RC.A.F. Sometimes awkward and sometimes quite beautiful, 49th Parallel succeeded magnificently in its main objective, to reach the hearts and minds of Americans and Canadians with its anti-Nazi sentiments. Powell's second unit, along with several key actors, crossed the Atlantic to film all over Canada, inserting stars like Leslie Howard and Laurence Olivier on sound stages in London. One of the best-formulated propaganda movies of the war, 49th Parallel (known here as The Invaders) was the last film pairing of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger before they took on the binary billing persona, "The Archers." Written to persuade America to join in the war, Pressburger's Oscar-winning original story has the audacity to make its main character a Nazi fugitive on a dash across Canada to reach sanctuary in the still-neutral United States. Written by Emeric Pressburger, Rodney Ackland Starring Eric Portman, Anton Walbrook, Leslie Howard, Raymond Massey, Laurence Olivier, Glynis Johns, Niall MacGinnis, Finlay Currie The Invaders / Street Date Febru/ 39.95
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