Why 49^th Par­al­lel is one of the most cun­ning war films ever made

Michael Pow­ell and Emer­ic Pressburger’s 49^th Par­al­lel, the sto­ry of six strand­ed Nazi U‑boat sailors who fail in their attempt to cross from Cana­da into the US in order to gain diplo­mat­ic immu­ni­ty, is per­haps the film­mak­ers’ most under-appre­ci­at­ed film. Lack­ing the Tech­ni­col­or splen­dour of The Red Shoes, the human emo­tion of A Mat­ter of Life or Death, or the rich melo­dra­ma of Black Nar­cis­sus, it is nonethe­less a skil­ful­ly craft­ed war dra­ma, with an out­stand­ing sound­track by Ralph Vaughn Williams and expert cin­e­matog­ra­phy. It also fea­tures an all-star cast includ­ing Leslie Howard as a paci­fist in the Cana­di­an wilds, Lau­rence Olivi­er as a French-Cana­di­an fur trap­per and Anton Wal­brook as a Hut­terite leader.

Receiv­ing sup­port from the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion, 49^th Par­al­lel was designed not only to enter­tain audi­ences but to encour­age Amer­i­can view­ers to sup­port US entry into the war. Screen­writer Press­burg­er had no qualms about mak­ing a pro­pa­gan­da film, lat­er stat­ing, ​“Goebbels con­sid­ered him­self an expert on pro­pa­gan­da, but I thought I’d show him a thing or two”. Nor was it an issue for Acad­e­my vot­ers, who award­ed him the film’s only Oscar for Best Orig­i­nal Motion Pic­ture Sto­ry. Inten­tions, how­ev­er, do not always match out­comes. For instance, the film cor­re­spon­dent of the Belfast New-Let­ter com­ment­ed that 49^th Par­al­lel left the impres­sion ​“that the Nazi is a daunt­less, almost invin­ci­ble ani­mal, how­ev­er ruth­less – an effect which may not have been exact­ly the one aimed at by the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion!” Whether audi­ences were con­vinced by the pro­pa­gan­da mes­sage is more dif­fi­cult to ascertain.

Fol­low­ing its pre­mière in Octo­ber 1941, 49^th Par­al­lel was shown in cin­e­mas across the UK where elab­o­rate mar­ket­ing cam­paigns and per­son­al appear­ances were used to pro­mote the film. Wal­brook, for instance, vis­it­ed Glasgow’s Para­mount The­atre where 250 Scots Cana­di­an troops and Michael Powell’s moth­er were also in atten­dance. Elab­o­rate foy­er dis­plays were set up in cin­e­mas fea­tur­ing giant globes, mod­el planes and sub­marines, flags, maps and dio­ra­mas. At the Mor­den Odeon the man­ag­er ​“had a 40-ft ban­ner across the front of the house car­ry­ing the name of the pic­ture, and some hun­dreds of British and Empire flags and shields over the canopy, as well as large flo­ral crates sup­port­ing cut-out heads of the stars”.

These cam­paigns helped attract patrons away from their homes, but the film entered British cin­e­mas at a time when audi­ences were dra­mat­i­cal­ly increas­ing and cin­emago­ing was a reg­u­lar activ­i­ty pro­vid­ing both enter­tain­ment and edu­ca­tion for mil­lions of UK cit­i­zens. The pri­va­tions of war encour­aged the habit fur­ther as admis­sions increased from 990 mil­lion in 1939 to 1.3 bil­lion in 1941, and then to a record high of 1.6 bil­lion in 1946. At the end of 1941, trade jour­nal Kine­mato­graph Week­ly announced that 49^th Par­al­lel had beat­en the likes of The Great Dic­ta­tor and Lady Hamil­ton to its biggest box-office win­ner of the year award. It proud­ly announced that ​“the best film of the year is British! This fact can­not be too forcibly stressed”.

Diary entries col­lect­ed as part of the Mass Obser­va­tion social research project show the film’s sto­ry and cen­tral theme of inter­na­tion­al co-oper­a­tion res­onat­ed with wartime audi­ences. One woman, who saw the film at Sale’s Pyra­mid cin­e­ma, record­ed that it ​“was mag­nif­i­cent, bru­tal in parts, but good and nat­ur­al, and what pro­pa­gan­da”. Jack Lip­pold claimed it was ​“the was the best film of the war I have yet seen” and praised the ​“mar­vel­lous shots show­ing the destruc­tion by bomb­ing of a U boat”. DL Medd added that the film was show­ing five times a day at his local Odeon and report­ed that at the screen­ing he attend­ed there ​“was quite a lot of clap­ping among the audience”.

The film also stayed with view­ers. In 1950, Pic­ture Post asked its read­ers to list their 10 favourite films. Mar­cus Bish­op from Hull includ­ed 49^th Par­al­lel along­side more cel­e­brat­ed British films such as The 39 Steps, Brief Encounter and Odd Man Out, and Louis New­combe of Berkham­st­ed held in the same regard as The Third Man.

In Jan­u­ary 1942, the film pre­miered simul­ta­ne­ous­ly in 18 Cana­di­an cities. One report sug­gest­ed that it ​“is sig­nif­i­cant that Ger­man sub­marines are now report­ed to be oper­at­ing off the shores of the North Amer­i­can coast, thus bring­ing the film’s fic­tion­al sto­ry in line with real-life events”. In the US, Colum­bia paid a record fig­ure for the dis­tri­b­u­tion rights of a British film, renam­ing it The Invaders for the Amer­i­can market.

But by the time of its US pre­mière in March 1942, the US had already entered the war fol­low­ing the Japan­ese bomb­ing of Pearl Har­bor. This may have dimin­ished the film’s pro­pa­gan­da val­ue but it didn’t damp­en its enter­tain­ment appeal, and dis­trib­u­tors empha­sised its star cast and excit­ing sto­ry. At New York’s Capi­tol The­atre, where the US pre­mière fea­tured transat­lantic tele­phone calls from Howard, Olivi­er and Pow­ell, reports sug­gest­ed it was as pop­u­lar as Gone with the Wind. By 1943, the film had tak­en $1.3 mil­lion in the Amer­i­can mar­ket alone.

It was sub­se­quent­ly shown on British tele­vi­sion, and fol­low­ing new inter­est in Pow­ell and Press­burg­er was re-released in 1984 by the British Film Insti­tute. Writ­ing in Month­ly Film Bul­letin, Tony Rayns cit­ed the film’s basis in trav­el­ogue and actor­ish per­for­mances as major weak­ness­es, but also stat­ed that ​“the film’s lack of com­pla­cen­cy about its use of stereo­types and its play with audi­ence iden­ti­fi­ca­tion… make it by far the most inter­est­ing British ​‘pro­pa­gan­da’ film of the peri­od”. In his notes for the 2007 Cri­te­ri­on DVD release, Charles Barr also argued for the film’s sig­nif­i­cance, claim­ing that it con­sol­i­dat­ed Pow­ell and Pressburger’s part­ner­ship, showed a bold exam­ple in terms of ambi­tion and fund­ing, and offered a skil­ful exam­ple of propaganda.