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49th Parallel Movie Review

49^th Parallel is a 1941 British war drama film directed by Michael Powell and starring Laurence Olivier, Leslie Howard and Raymond Massey. It’s a very odd war story.

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“Nazis? That explains your arrogance,

stupidity, and bad manners“

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A World War II U-boat crew is stranded in northern Canada. To avoid internment, they must make their way to the border and get into the still-neutral US. This movie is told from the perspective of the Nazis, which instantly made it very strange and unlike anything else I’ve seen within this genre.

Personally, I don’t think this idea worked all that well. Asking from the audience to sympathize with the Nazis at the time when they were committing their worst atrocities was just a miscalculated effort at humanizing those who aren’t deserving of such treatment.

There is one aspect where 49^th Parallel excels at and that is the overall adventurous tone to it. This movie is basically a WWII action-adventure and whenever it focused on those elements, it was pretty strong. The film’s technical aspects also helped it a lot as the cinematography is great, the location work is stupendous and the production design is excellent.

But the characters needed much better development to pull off such a character-driven movie. The German characters needed a more complex portrayal, but they are certainly the best developed characters in comparison to the other unfortunate additions.

Yes, the acting is definitely the problem here. While Raymond Massey is okay, Leslie Howard is put into one of his weaker roles and his performance is subpar in comparison to many of his great turns. But the most egregious performance came from Laurence Olivier himself. Playing a French-Canadian, Olivier put on a ridiculous, unbelievable accent and his performance is both theatrical and hammy, but not in a charming way.

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49^th Parallel was called The Invaders in the US and it received great attention there, even getting nominated for three Oscars, winning one for the story in a totally undeserved, bad call. I do get that the movie was culturally diverse and unique for its time, but the execution simply left a lot to be desired.

49th Parallel is a British WWII movie that was rather culturally diverse in its cast for this time period. The movie excelled in the strong action-adventure elements and accomplished technical aspects. The problem here is twofold. One is the the foolish idea to excessively humanize the Nazis and portray them as the protagonists while the other is the subpar acting from a couple of performers, Laurence Olivier being the most egregious with his terrible accent and hammy performance.

My Rating – 3