in Uncategorized

49th Parallel

49th Parallel. Michael Powell. 1941.

Oops. I bought a box set of Powell/Pressburger movies, and now I guess I have to watch them…

I thought it was a 2K set, but this is DVD.

Wow, this is a proper anti-German propaganda piece. I like it!

Oh! It’s Laurence Olivier playing that trapper with the bad French accent! I couldn’t quite place him but now that I know I don’t understand why I didn’t see that immediately. Weird.

It’s pretty unusual in that we follow the Germans (who are, with one exception) horrible people, escaping through the Canadian countryside, so whenever one of them is killed, the audience would presumably cheer.

The meeting with the Utopian Christian settlement is also… odd.

I like bits of this movie (like the great shots of the wheat fields), and it’s not dull or anything, but it’s not a good movie.

The way it ends with a flagrant violation of international law concerning refugees as the “RAH RAH YEAH *punches air*” moment is fascinating, but then again, we’re talking about literal Nazis here, so whatevs.

Leave a Reply