49th Parallel (released in Britain as The Invaders), made by Michael Powell
and Emeric Pressburger is superficially wartime propaganda.
Lieutenant Hirth (Eric Portman, in a role originally intended for Michael
Redgrave), a Nazi U-boat commander, and four of his men are stranded in
Canada, and they have to get to the border.
The film episodically introduces them to a number of people who represent
various qualities, some useful, and others dangerous in wartime. Laurence
Olivier plays the devil-may-care but naive French-Canadian trapper whose
lack of vigilance costs him his life. Anton Walbrook shines as Peter, the
gentle religious sect leader and spiritual idealist, fine in his way, very
noble, but in the long run no help in winning a war. As with so many
Walbrook roles, he seems to be acting out his own personal outsider status
with the full encouragement of Powell and Pressburger. His intimate scene
with Vogel (Niall Macginnis), the decent sensitive Nazi (who is also rather
ethereal)
[Niall Macginnis - etheral ??? - Nicky],
has a definite ring to it.
Finally there's Leslie Howard as the novelist Philip Armstrong Scott who
seems to be saying 'a plague on both your houses'. Ian Christie describes
him as a whimsical English anthropologist and aesthete who maintains that
'wars may come and men may go but art goes on for ever' He lives close to
the Indians in a tent in the wilderness, with paintings by Picasso and
Matisse, a copy of Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain. Scott is an artistic
outsider who makes merry with quips and -in one scene- with a direct sexual
invitation to Lohrmann (John Chandos), one of Portman's men (who seems to
have a thing for his leader). As with the Walbrook character, Howard is
seen as a wanderer, with no need of women, just the wilderness and the
Indians.
Sussing the gay Nazi he fixes him with a potent gaze, holds it for a while,
then provocatively says just one word: 'Interested?'
With Powell and Pressburger at the helm, Portman, Walbrook and Howard on
the screen, and Rodney Ackland contributing to the script, easy judgements
are not made. It preserves P and P's reputation for decency and honour in
the depiction of Germans and English.
It also confirms them, just before their 'great' period, as completely
original film-makers, with a faerie quality
that allows them to treat lightly some terrible dark themes.
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