49thparallel

The vast majority of movies about World War II I’ve seen are set in the American perspective or the
British perspective. There are even a few handfuls of films from the views of French, Italian and
German perspectives. “49th Parallel” is the first one I have seen that deals solely with the
Canadian front, and yet shows it through the eyes of German fugitives.

Needless to say, this is a unique one.

A German U-boat is wreaking havoc off the Canadian coast and they send out a scouting party to
bring back fuel. Unfortunately, the sub gets aced right after their landing party reaches shore.
Now the desperate band of surviving Nazis is on the run, fueled by ideological irrationality.
Everyone they come into contact with they try to dominate or subjugate and yet, Canadians from all
walks of life refuse to give in. Will the Nazis escape? How many people will they kill to attain their
freedom?

Director Michael Powell displays a very interesting voice in this film. His storytelling is fascinating
because it does not linger on the characters we like. It flows out of their worlds as the characters
we don’t like drag us onwards without remorse. The German soldiers encounter a whole pantheon
of individuals, some played by very notable actors, including Laurence Olivier as a French
Canadian hunter and Leslie Howard as a British Canadian intellectual in the Rocky Mountains.

It would be a waste of time to talk about Olivier or Howard’s performances as the story is focused
on the sinister Nazi villains, but I will say that Howard is, for once, not a whiny ponce, but a shrewd
and upstanding intellectual. This film has a sad irony to it as well. We watch as Howard’s character
stands up to the Nazis he encounters, but only with the knowledge that in his real life some two
years later, Howard becomes a casualty of the war that this propaganda film rails against. Howard
was shot down by German fighters over the Bay of Biscay in 1943.

“49th Parallel” is a product of its time, and for that reason many aspects of its story must be
accepted and forgiven. The monologues about war and idealism are valuable as messages, but
their overt nature is due to the need for clear messages in British films of the period in the face of
the military threat from Germany, much like the American war films later, including “So Proudly We
Hail” and every John Wayne film of the 1940s.

Powell manages to interweave art and anti-fascist propaganda into an entirely watchable and
poignant story of cat and mouse, or should I say cats and mice. Of course, we’re never really sure
who the mice are and who the cats are as the power structure changes hands often. But that is the
real insight in the movie, that war and its fronts, both ideological and tactical, are completely fluid
and soon the lovers hate the haters and the pacifists will strike out at the violent.