49th Parallel (1942)

Excellent but underrated film

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

If you saw the movie you know why it is labelled as propaganda.OBSERVATION: Out of last three Germans two were clearly caught alive. Later in the movie the authorities say that the lieutenant is the last German alive. That means Allies were not respecting international laws for POW.GOOFS: 1)Germany is blamed for starting the war. They say Germany invaded Poland. Actually Russians did exactly the same, and Russians = Allies. So in reality the Allies and Germans were equally guilty for the crimes of war. 2)In the movie it is the Germans who despise Eskimo not Canadians. The movie "Germans" are also saying something about black people who were subject of U.S. racism.I would also like to notice the comparison between Germans and some primitive tribes. They could say nothing wrong about Germans. The only "bad" thing is the primitive tribes, since they were subject of racism in U.S. and Canada.The authors of this movie should publicly apologies to the families of European soldiers who did their duty and were deferred to political tribunals and murdered after war.

***SPOILERS*** Truly bizarre British war propaganda movie that has a bunch of German sailors stuck in Canada when their U-Boat, U-37, was sunk by the Canadian Air Force in Hudson's Bay. These bumbling "Nazi Supermen" as they like to be called then embark on a mission to cross the length and breath of Canada to Vancover which takes almost the entire length of the movie only to end up in Niagria Falls some 2,200 miles east of Vancover when they were headed for! All that travailing in what seems like the time it takes to go from San Francisco to Oakland which is something like two or three miles!Lead by their both fearless and at the same time brainless leader Let. Hirth, Eric Portman, the Nazi sailors seem to have luck on their side with everything going in their favor even though they never bother to hide their identities by always shooting off their mouths and giving Nazi salutes in how great their country Nazi Germany and their leader Adolph Hitler is. This in a country that's in a life and death struggle with Germany and that even saying good things about the Nazi regime can put them,if they were Canadian citizens, behind bars for at least five years or until the end of the war! We get to see the Nazis get involved with a number of Canadians as well as native Eskimos whom they end up killing yet nobody in the Canadian military or internal security service, like the mounties, seems to even notice it! This after their Nazis sub was sunk and an all out alert was called to track down and arrest or even shoot its surviving members! There's also a scene with the Nazis ending up in this German religious Hutterite Christan community where one of them Vogel, Nall MacGinnis, has a change of heart about the Fatherland and tries to join it. Finding a girlfriend Anna, Glynis Jones, and a job as the community baker didn't set well with Vogel's commanding officer Let. Hirth, who had the poor and love sick slub shot at sunrise for his defying his orders.***SPOILERS*** The last 15 or so minutes of the film really starts to get utterly ridicules with the two surviving Nazis Let. Hirth & Lorhmann, John Chawdos, ending up in the Great Pacific North-West in this Indian colony with English Indian expert Philip Armstrong Scott played by a wimpy and effeminate sounding Leslie Howard. Scott who befriended the two Nazis, like every other Canadian in the film, soon realized what their up to after they tied him, which he seemed to enjoy, up and destroyed his precious paintings books and notes, which greatly upset him, about the Indian tribes in the area. In what seems like him being Immune to bullets Scott captures Lohrmann single handedly,telling the group of Canadian hunters and mounties to stay out of it, only to have Let. Hirth escape some 2,200 miles back east,in what seems like a few minutes, to Niagria Falls in his attempt to cross into the neutral, at the time, USA and get political asylum there. Just when you thought that you've seen everything poor Let. Hirth runs into an AWOL Canadian Army soldier Andy Block, Raymond Massey, on the train he's hiding in and as usual the brainless Nazi shoot his big mouth off about his plans to escape to the USA and thus become a big hero in the Fatherland, Nazi Germany, in being able to outwit the entire Canadian population. That gives Andy, who left the Canadian Army because he wasn't sent to Euurpe to fight the Nazis, a reason to put an end to Let. Hirth's flight to freedom by cold cocking the by now daffy ridicules and reality challenged Nazi who was,in the train inspectors finding that he wasn't on the train's manifest, on his way back to Canada anyway!

Now, I think this is a very fine film, but it has a reputation that is much greater than the film itself, when taken in its entirety.There are parts within this film that are themselves greater than the whole film as a package, for there are also parts that are either overly melodramatic or not well-realized that hinder its greatness.As example, the scenes within the outbound cottage with Olivier are magnificent, as are the campground scenes with Leslie Howard. As counterpoint, the recklessness of the Nazi commander in this same sequence is absurd considering his previous careful nature.The characterization of the Nazi Baker is quite believable and poignant, yet most of the others are merely cardboard characters and the commander is quite overboard after the first hour. The whole sequence at the end with Raymond Massey is mostly ridiculous both with Massey's overacting and the Nazi's unbelievable behavior in announcing himself and giving his gun away while still locked inside the boxcar bin.This sequence is also the one that shows the true nature of this film, which was wartime propaganda. Not that this itself was bad, but this type of blatant propaganda does not make a film one for the ages. The fact that the producers at the end twist legality by using spurious technicalities to create a righteously moral outcome, the ending being such due to the producer's own demonizing of characters, well, this itself is worthy of the Nazi propaganda machine. Mostly the producers are stating that the end result justifies the means, wholly a position that the Nazis would take.It's unfortunate, for this ending brings the film down from greatness to being a routine film with some great sequences. And there were several other ways to end this production without the use of such hypocrisy, and pandering to wartime fervor, that would have been as satisfying, and would have made this film as great as it could have been.

Where do I begin reviewing this comedy of errors. A German U-Boat sinking ships in the Atlantic decides to sail thousands of miles to Hudson's Bay for supplies (Germany would have been closer). They sail to the far west side of Hudson's Bay where no U-Boat ever entered during WWII because they would find no shipping targets there. The U-Boat surfaces and raises the national flag instead of the German naval ensign. They send ashore six men for "supplies." For some fathomless reason, not one but three RCAF Hudson bombers are patrolling this area? They attack the U-boat whose captain fails to dive on their approach but instead chooses to fight them off by personally manning the lone machine gun. A fitting ending to the most ill-advised journey of any submarine. The Nazi invaders occupy a dwelling ashore with rifles and fixed bayonets, what cramped submarines carry bayonets? They shoot poor Laurence Olivier to put a merciful end to his horrible performance. The Nazis then skyjack a sea plane which conveniently one of them knows how to fly? They run out of fuel and crash into a cold north Canadian lake where all manage to swim ashore with no sign of hypothermia. There in the middle of the most sparsely populated area of Manitoba they find a commune of German speaking Christians, whom they promptly alienate? They then decide to "walk" over a thousand miles to Vancouver to board a Japanese ship. On the way they meet effete Leslie Howard in his canoe paddling to his teepee full of valuable paintings. Need I go on? This is the kind of film that gives propaganda a bad name. No wonder many Canadians found all the stereotypes laughable. A shame so many good actors were wasted on this total fantasy. The biggest joke is that the film actually won an Oscar for Best Screenplay. Were standards that low in the 1940's.