Retro Review: 49th Parallel (1941)

Anyone who has seen Quentin Tarantino’s 2009 movie “Inglourious Basterds” understands the concept of a Nazi propaganda film. The climax of the movie takes place at the premier of a fictional war film called “Nation’s Pride,” produced by Hitler’s Director of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels to inspire continued German support for the war effort.

In real life the Nazis made dozens of real propaganda films between 1933 and 1945, but what’s less remembered is so did the Allies. In 1940 the British Ministry of Information approached director Michael Powell to make a propaganda film to aid the war effort. The idea Powell suggested would become “49th Parallel,” a movie made with one goal - to sway the then-neutral United States into joining the fight against the Nazis.

The premise of “49th Parallel,” which ended up releasing in America in 1942 after we had joined the war,  is phenomenal - a German U-boat (submarine) is chased by Canadian forces after sinking an Allied supply ship in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. Unable to escape back to Europe, the Nazi submarine hides in the last place the Canadian forces will look for them - in the sub-arctic waters of the Hudson Bay. While a small group of six Nazis are sent on a mission to shore to search for supplies, the U-boat is destroyed by the Canadian Air Force. The six surviving Nazis now have one mission - to evade capture while traveling thousands of kilometers and hopefully escaping to safety in the United States. 

What follows this setup is a film so fast-paced, entertaining, and thought-provoking it’s kind of hard to believe it’s more than 80 years old. The Nazis meet a variety of characters during their escape, from French Canadian trappers to a religious sect of German immigrants to academic researchers. All of these interactions are even more interesting when you consider the goal the filmmakers had in mind, all the way to a grand finale at the border in Niagara Falls, where two Americans have to make a choice of whether or not to intervene. You’re practically screaming at them to get involved, which is of course exactly what the filmmakers intended.

Rating: 9/10

“49th Parallel” is available to stream on HBO Max, the Criterion Channel, and VOD.