Last weekend I wrote about Foreign Correspondent, an early Hitchcock that deals with the beginnings of WWII in really interesting ways. It's on Netflix Watch Instantly right now, and it would make a great double feature with Powell and Pressburger's 49th Parallel, also on Watch Instantly:
The year was 1940. For the Brits, the war wasn’t coming, it was already here. The bombings of London were a daily menace. The war effort against the Axis was failing. And across the pond, the U.S… wasn’t really doing much of anything. With the one-two punch of WWI and the Great Depression, the U.S. wasn’t exactly excited to get involved in another global conflict, to say the least. Appealing to the heads of state wouldn’t get the U.S. involved; Washington more or less followed the voters. Instead, the British government gambled on an appeal to the hearts and minds of the American public through film. It was the renaissance period of propaganda, after all.
Hence, two of the British Film Industry’s sharpest, youngest whippersnappers – Michael Powell and Emerich Pressburger – were called into duty to make a movie showcasing the bravery of British mine-sweeper squads. But Powell and Pressburger, who would go on to produce such mind-blowing, whimpering-heap-inducing classics as The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, Black Narcissus, A Matter of Life and Death, and The Red Shoes, always knew how to sniff out a great story, and decided to make any entirely different movie altogether. This movie, rather than chronicling the war woes on some distant shore, would bring the war very literally to America’s doorstep, then kick down the door, then steal all the jewelry. That movie is 49th Parallel.
49th Parallel has one of the most unique plot structures I’ve ever seen pulled off successfully in a movie. A German U-Boat terrorizes Canada’s Hudson Bay, and is subsequently destroyed by Canadian planes. A handful of Nazis survive the blast. They start their journey in Eskimo territory, but their episodic, topsy-turvy tale takes them from one end of the country to the other in their quest to escape from Allied Canada into the then-neutral United States. Screenwriter Emerich Pressburger bragged that he would teach Hitler’s propaganda head Goebbels a thing or two with 49th Parallel; he succeeds admirably. Canada is depicted as a magnificent fantasy land brimming with peacefulness, nobility, bravery, and diversity. It’s pure propaganda, but it’s masterfully written, exciting to watch, and powerfully compelling.
49th Parallel’s greatest trick is making the antagonists the main characters and “guides.” They are our eyes and ears, and we approach each new episode and each new challenge from their point of view. At first, the Nazi U-Boat survivors seem almost reasonable. They’re certainly smart enough, brave enough, and cunning enough. We feel pangs of sadness as they inevitably start to die off. We are forced to identify with them by the very structure of the plot, which makes it even more of a magic trick when we end up rooting for their failure. With each episodic encounter, however, Pressburger chips away at Nazi ideology, piece by piece. In the end, we are left with the stark, compelling impression that Nazi-ism goes against everything that is good and just in the world.
A fantastic ensemble cast was assembled for this production. The Nazi crew does not feature a standout performance, but makes impressive use of group dynamic, making 49th Parallel an unexpected grandfather to the men-on-a-mission action subgenre, movies like The Dirty Dozen, Where Eagles Dare, and Kelly’s Heroes. The great performances, however, are glorified cameos peppered throughout the movie. Each episode comes ready with its own star turn. Lawrence Olivier shows up in one of the most idiosyncratic roles of his career as a French-Canadian fur trapper. If you’re familiar with Olivier’s work, you will hardly believe it’s him. Anton Walbrook, the ol’ Powell/Pressburger standby who would make his greatest impression later as ballet impresario Lermontov in The Red Shoes, is the moral heart of the story as the peace loving leader of a compound made up of expatriated Germans who left the Motherland to escape tyranny and fascism. It’s not the flashiest role, but Walbrook brings power and dignity to a part that might otherwise be quiet and forgettable. Leslie Howard plays an effeminate, aristocratic academic, and watching his character awaken to his own flamboyant bravery over the course of his brief screen time is a joy. Sadly, just three years after 49th Parallel, Leslie Howard’s airplane was shot down by German fire while travelling from Portugal to England. I am confident that he would have been one of the biggest names in British cinema if not for his untimely death.
After all the amazing performances and breathless sequences, leave it up to these masters to save the best for last. Raymond Massey hams it up mano e mano against the last remaining Nazi for a 15 minute long sequence on which the failure or success of the movie rests. It’s just perfect. Massey concludes 49th Parallel by growling probably the single best line in movie history: “Put up your dukes, Nazi!”