Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

Intcatinfo A Masterpiece!

Glimmerubro It is not deep, but it is fun to watch. It does have a bit more of an edge to it than other similar films.

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

PoppyTransfusion So sayeth one of the characters, Richard Armstrong Scott (played by Leslie Howard) and never have truer words been said of films in general and of this one in particular. WW2 has long gone but this celluloid gem remains and although filmed for WW2 propaganda this has not limited its continued enjoyment and appreciation. It is a superb commentary on the dangers of any ideology that demands total blind servitude of its followers and perpetrates cruelty and murder to attain it. The film is a stinging commentary on Nazism set against a back drop of the ordinary and human endeavours of people in Canada.The story opens with a German U-Boat off Canadian waters. The boat and crew require fuel and supplies to enable their return to Germany and so they select a remote part of Canada (Hudson Bay) to surface whilst 6 of the crew go on foot to a village to procure the necessities for the journey home. Disaster strikes when the U-Boat is traced and bombed to pieces by Canadian fighter pilots leaving the 6 men who reached shore stranded on foot and in enemy territory. Their journey to reach the USA, which was still neutral in WW2 at this point, is the main focus of the film and is told in 4 chapters: the pillaging at Hudson Bay; a sojourn at a German Christian community, the Hutterites; on foot going west where they encounter a writer researching the native Amerindians; and finally, a confrontation with a Canadian soldier on board a freight train travelling across Niagara Falls from Canada into the USA. During the course of the journey the 6 crew dwindle as they die or are arrested leaving just one of them trying to reach the US at Niagara.There are many stars of the era in this film and performances all round are superb even Laurence Olivier's turn as a French Canadian (resembling Gael Garcia Bernal when he sports a beard!) that sometimes raises eyebrows. There is some witty and perceptive dialogue and even though the Nazis sometimes get the better of the Canadians, the Canadians are given the greater voice. Some fine examples of this are:"You and your Hitlerism are like the microbes of some filthy disease.""I never would have believed that grown up men could behave like spiteful little schoolboys" (after a Nazi symbolically destroys a Matisse and Picasso)."One armed superman {the Nazi} against one unarmed decadent democrat." The chapter in which the Nazis hide out with the Hutterites is particularly poignant as one of the Nazis discovers to his astonishment that in the community people work because they want to support the community, not for financial gain. They work at whatever they enjoy and/or are skilled at. If they leave their community for any reason and return they are not punished but welcomed back. The contrast drawn between them and Nazi Germany is implicit. The importance of the Hutterite chapter is that this film is not anti-German but anti-Nazi.Watching the film 70 years since it was made one feels patriotism roused as well as hatred and fear of Nazism and what it represents; amazing as a piece of propaganda and marvellous as a film. Finally, this film served Canada and its peoples very well giving it and them a character separate from and distinct to the USA.

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

robert-temple-1 This is an unusual film in many respects. It features splendid music by Vaughan-Williams, and in order to let the sections of music finish on the soundtrack rather than cut it off, we are often treated to extended montage sequences of the magnificence of the wild scenery of Canada, where the film is entirely set. (The 49th parallel is the border between Canada and the United States. In the USA, this film was released under the title 'The Invaders'.) The cinematographer was Freddie Young, whose work with the Indian tepee lighting effects shows his early promise with creative use of light. Camera operator was Skeets Kelly. Together, they did one bold 'avante garde' shot from a small boat as it rams ashore from a lake. This was very quickly cut away from, perhaps even too quickly, by the restless pace imposed by the editor, David Lean, who was soon to become a famous director. Numerous already famous people collaborated on this early wartime propaganda effort, which manages to be relatively light on propaganda and heavy on story. And a good story it is too, written and conceived by Romanian emigree Emeric Pressburger, for which he won a well-deserved Oscar. The film was ably directed by the always talented Michael Powell. The one stand-out bad performance is by Laurence Olivier, who wrongly imagined that he could play a French-Canadian outdoorsman. Despite showing his chest and acting hearty, he fails pathetically to pull this off, and his mechanical mouthing of the accent is far too laboured. He was so often his own worst enemy, by calculating rather than feeling his characters. The opposite is true of the delightful Lesley Howard, who creates a wonderful, eccentric and whimsical character of a vacationing scholar who is on the verge of becoming a Scarlet Pimpernel at any moment (he had made 'Pimpernel Smith' earlier the same year.). Niall MacGinnis is superb as a pathetically regretful Nazi who just wants to go back to being a baker and living a quiet life. Anton Walbrook is magnificent in his intensity as the leader of a pacifist religious sect, and he gets to deliver the best speech in the film. But the finest acting of all is by Eric Portman, who is absolutely terrifying as a fanatical Nazi blind to all reason. Glynis Johns makes an appearance as a fey young girl with a quavery voice, who gets a jibe in at the Nazis by overcoming her innate timidity. This was a very clever propaganda film, because its messages were deeply embedded in an ingenious story line. That story line is innovative and highly dramatic. A German submarine surfaces in Hudson Bay on the Atlantic Coast of Canada, during the period before America was in the War, but Canada, as a British colony, was already a combatant. Six men led by a lieutenant (played by Portman) go ashore in search of food and water supplies, but before they can go far, their submarine is sunk by aerial bombardment, leaving the six men stranded. The Canadian authorities are unaware that these six Nazi seamen are on the loose. The story then becomes the incredible odyssey of their journey across Canada, and the havoc they cause, as they try without food, water, or money to reach Vancouver on the Pacific Coast and take a ship to Japan. Naturally, lots of people get in their way and are killed. This whole project is very well pulled-off indeed, and makes exciting viewing even today.

hjmsia49 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.