Wednesday 14 June 2023

49th Parallel (1941 Michael Powell & prod)

Yes, the last one with solo credits - Emeric won the Oscar (and that's possibly why).

An interesting film, made as propaganda, commissioned before France had surrendered, an attempt to show the potential defenselessness of Canada to encourage the Americans to join in. As German submarine crew crosses Canada, we learn more about each 'type', and receive little sermons / lessons from Emeric about what both Germany and Democracy mean. So it's nicely balanced, like Blimp, with the one sympathetic Nazi executed for wanting to make bread for the Hitterite community - boo!

Full of interesting touches, and great use of Canada, e.g. the Eskimos and Native Indians, and the landscape. Portman's non-religious Nazi fanatic is so decadent that he eats a hot dog sideways- filthy Kraut!

And a great cast. The Germans include Eric Portman (who initially mistrusted Powell), Niall MacGinnis, Raymond Lovell and Peter Moore.

Encountering (and mainly studio-set): Finlay Currie and Larry Olivier; Anton Walbrook and Glynis Johns; Leslie Howard; and Raymond Massey for the terrific train-bound conclusion (shot entirely in a small studio in Montreal).

Music: Vaughn Williams, Camera: Freddie Young, editor David Lean.

From 1940, Powell writes: "It was one thing for me, who was English, to be so nonchalant about returning to my country in the middle of a disaster, and quite another for Emeric, who was an enemy alien, an artist, a journalist, a writer who had come to England as a haven from Hitler after an uneasy passage through Prague, Berlin and Paris..'



Walbrook and Portman in the same scene is a weird experience - The Red Shoes bumps into A Canterbury Tale!

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