Review of 49th Parallel (1941) by Performance P — 06 Jan 2011

'49th Parallel' tells the unique story of a stranded U-Boat crew and their journey through Canada. Although this film can be historically as a 1941 anti-Nazi propaganda film, it has one of the more unique WWII plots. It is very similar to Mrs. Miniver except that in this film it is told from the prospective of those enemy combatants living within the homeland.

The film does not have an overwhelming cast and crew other than Lawrence Oliver who only is in a small section of the film (but makes up almost one-hundred percent of the film poster). The director, Michael Powell, never received any Academy nods other than a writing nomination for 'One Aircraft Missing' in 1943. The nostalgia of reflecting watching these classics films is seeing the great stars of the golden era like Bogart or Stewart. This film is definitely lacking that.

The film starts out strong, is intriguing but goes down hill as the plot thickens. A story of this nature should feature a lot of excitement and seclusion. It certainly features a lot of seclusion do to the locations of where the film takes place. The excitement definitely lacks though. As stated before, these are enemy combatants attempting to escape. Not a lot of escape flows this naturally exciting event. This is due to how the film was edited and how the story was told. Finally, the conclusion of the film was very anti-climatic. It was fitting but not fitting of what should have been an exciting conclusion.