Director:
Michael Powell
CLV: $39.95 -
1 disc, catalog # CC1240L
Michael Powell's
49th Parallel (originally released in the United States as The
Invaders) is one of the great thrillers of World War II. It ranks alongside
Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent as one of the two finest amalgams
of
suspense and propaganda to grace the big screen during the years 1939-45.
The film's plot is simplicity itself: during 1941, a German submarine raiding
Canadian coastal waters is sunk by Royal Canadian Air Force bombers, but
six
survivors attempt to reach safety in the then-neutral United States. Along
the
way, as they flee from the manhunt in their wake, they meet a cross-section
of
Canadians -- French, Scottish, Eskimo, German, Native American, and English
--
in a series of encounters that are alternately lyrical, humorous, and
savage.
49th Parallel is more than a mere thriller, however, and was
far more important than its two Oscar nominations -- including Best Picture
--
and Academy Award for Best Original Story would indicate. Begun during the
darkest days of World War II, immediately after the fall of France, it set
a
standard for filmmaking that transformed British cinema during the war and
ultimately altered it forever.
Director/producer Michael Powell and
screenwriter Emeric Pressburger made a movie that defied the limits of
filmmaking in wartime. In the midst of crippling travel restrictions, they
crisscrossed the Atlantic and the length and breadth of Canada, covering
more
than 50,000 miles making their film. In the face of a British film industry
that was close to collapse, they forged ahead with a topical thriller of
two
hours' length, with a cast drawn from all over the world. They assembled
from
all of this a film filled with such beauty, vision, and vibrancy, that it
was
taken to heart by American audiences in a way that no British film before
it --
including Hitchcock's celebrated thrillers -- ever had been.
The quality of
Powell and Pressburger's achievement also inspired J. Arthur Rank, head
of
Britain's General Film Distributors and its parent company, the Rank
Organization, to expand production. While other British studios were cutting
back on operations, Rank used 49th Parallel and its success in America
(where, by Powell's estimate, it netted an unheard of $5 million in box-office
receipts) as the basis for establishing independent production companies
headed
by Powell and Pressburger (The Archers), David Lean (Cineguild), and Filippo
Del Giudice and Laurence Olivier (Two Cities) resulting in such celebrated
films as Stairway to Heaven, Henry V, In Which We Serve
,
Odd Man Out, Oliver Twist, Black Narcissus, and
The Red
Shoes.
British films, once overshadowed by their American cousins (except
when Hitchcock was involved) were never the same again. Within two years,
Warner Bros. -- which had scarcely deigned to look northward for story settings
in its previous 16 years of existence -- came up with Northern Pursuit
(1943), starring Errol Flynn as a mountie chasing Nazis across Canada. Warners
also took the trouble to unofficially remake Powell and Pressburger's next
film, starring Errol Flynn and Ronald Reagan as a pair of Allied pilots
shot
down over Germany.
49th Parallel surpassed all later attempts to cash
in on its success, thanks, in part, to a pair of extraordinary performances.
Anton Walbrook -- who would go on to become a screen legend in Powell and
Pressburger's Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, and The Red Shoes
-- is spellbinding in the role of an anti-Nazi German (a part that got Powell
and Pressburger into trouble with the war office). And Eric Portman is
terrifying in the part of Hirth, the Nazi true believer who outwits his
pursuers.
Among the movie's less obvious but equally compelling attributes is
the alternately haunting and majestic music of Ralph Vaughan Williams, the
reigning giant of 20th century British music, who made his motion picture
debut
with 49th Parallel at the age of sixty nine. 49th Parallel
also
employed the services of two star cinematographers, Freddy Young (Lawrence
of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago) and Osmond Borrodaile (The Four
Feathers), and was edited -- by Powell's admission, to a brilliantly
concise two hours -- by a fellow named David Lean, who was about to go on
to
bigger things. Put them all together and you have an overwhelming piece
of
cinema history as well as one of the most finely wrought thrillers ever
put on
celluloid.
-- BRUCE EDER
CREDITS
Director and Producer: Michael Powell
Scenario: Emeric Pressburger
Dialogue: Rodney Ackland
Cinematography: Frederick Young
Editor: David Lean
Music: Ralph Vaughan Williams
Music Direction: Muir Mathieson
Associate Producers: Roland Gillett, George Brown
Production Supervisor: Harold Boxall
Assistant Director: A. Seabourne
FEATURES
An audio
essay by film and music historian Bruce Eder discussing various aspects
of
49th Parallel's production. Mr. Eder has written extensively on British
films, in general, and Michael Powell's work, in
particular.
TRANSFER
This laserdisc of 49th Parallel
was made from the 35mm fine grain master. Although this is the best remaining
film element, it does have some audio and video damage. We believe, however,
that this version of 49th Parallel is the best available in the
world.
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