Reptileenbu Did you people see the same film I saw?

Curapedi I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Invaderbank The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Justina The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Byrdz First thing you have to do after seeing this film is hop on over to the photo gallery and check out the theatrical posters. There's a couple with Laurence Olivier playing a virile French-Canadian and carrying a buxom, tightly clad, high heeled blonde babe in his burly arms. Problem is that the only women in the film were members of a Hutterite Community and the only blonde with braids was a very young Glynis Johns telling everyone that she was "not yet sixteen". Another problem was that she was never even within earshot of Olivier much less lugged around by him.The film is actually a series of stories set in various areas in Canada. On of the "user reviews" complained about the Americans in Hollywood who were so clueless as to Canadian Geography ... thing is, though, it was a Canadian film.The trivia section on the IMDb page is worth reading for the political background on the film.It's worth watching if only to see poor Laurence Olivier trying to sound like he is a French-Canadian trapper.

LCShackley In the famed war movie "The Great Escape," a Allied soldiers escape from a prison camp and try to make their way to safety. We cheer them all the way. In "49th Parallel" we have the reverse: a group of six Nazis escapes the destruction of their submarine, and tries to escape through Canada to the USA. Along the way they murder, pillage, and destroy...and we boo them all the way across the continent and back.I was interested in this film because I have been familiar with the Vaughan Williams score for years, but never seen the images it was written for. "49th Parallel" starts slowly, almost like a war documentary. Then we're taken to a far-flung trapper's HQ, where we're forced to watch Laurence Olivier do a Pepe-le-Pew style French character. I almost gave up there, but then the plot started to thicken. Although there are several preachy, propagandistic spots in the film, there's a lot of action and character development as well, with a zinger of an ending. If you can make it through the first 30 minutes, the rest of the movie will reward you for your patience.

drrap Yes, it is (was) propaganda. But never has there been a more curiously right and true epitome of the sloppy yet resilient defense of transcontinental democracy than this. Canada wins because Canada is a mess; the Nazi neatness and demand for clear-cut lines falters, and in the end is clobbered with a roundhouse right. So long as I live, I will love this film; it's P&P at their best, and the Vaughan WIlliams score is second to none. What else can one say? I wish I were Canadian.And since the IMDb, to which I contributed long before it became such a commercial concern, insists that I have at least 10 lines of text, I will keep on jabbering for a few more lines, in order to preserve the above comments for posteriority ...

Polaris_DiB Earlier Powell and Pressburger (pre-Archers?...?) skit about a bunch of crashed Germans in Canada during WWII, right before the US enters the war. The Germans want to make it to the US border where they'll have political asylum, but first they must get through the vast landscape and 11 million population of not-quite-so-wary Canadians--adversaries that are more happy to listen to their German philosophy with a cock-headed grin and a justifiable democratic argument against their politics than they are trying to stop or kill the group in particular. Yet somehow the group of six Germans quickly falls to five, then four, then three, then two...As a bit of WWII propaganda it has its fallacies. As a survival in enemy territory narrative, it's interesting because you want to see how far they'll go (everyone loves the underdog), but you also want them to get stopped. The Archers mix those contrary conceits very well. And as a character-based war drama, it's a bit too caricaturistic to take too seriously. Everyone has extreme accents, and the lead German has the faint trace of a lisp. Powell and Pressburger do the best when contrasting their hyper-diagonal marching against the curved countryside, and they take a particularly "democratic" stance here--one so democratic, at points it lingers near communism, which the Germans are appropriately appalled at but not all that believably considering their close proximity to this little country called the USSR (perhaps you've heard of it).It's fun seeing these two auteurs get a handle on the type of characters they like and the type of filming they want to do, but later they were to go on to create much more sophisticated, gorgeous, and well-told works that stand out greater in the annals of cinematic history. They would keep such things as the caricatures (the Yank in A Canterbury Tale, the entire figure of Colonel Blimp), international drama (Black Narcissus, A Matter of Life and Death), and love of the countryside (A Canterbury Tale, A Matter of Life or Death) in much more solid and spectacular narratives. This movie is an early work, and feels it, but it's not quite so bad as their somewhat regrettable I Know Where I'm Going.--PolarisDiB