Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day One Hundred and Ten: Canadian Hideout

Of all the films they worked on together only two of the works from Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger were nominated for an Oscar. The first, which I watched much earlier, was the classic The Red Shoes which has come to the forefront of the public knowledge after the recent release of Black Swan. However the second film is the lesser known 49th Parallel, a film that Powell made to try and convince the USA to join the war. 49th Parallel sees a German U-Boat crash on the Canadian shore and tracks the adventures of the six Nazi officers as they try to traverse the land and find a way back home. On the way they come across various stereotypical Canadian characters including a French Canadian trapper bizzarley depicted by Laurence Olivier, Leslie Howard's reclusive British intellectual and Raymond Massey's soldier who has gone AWOL and in the film's final scene stops Eric Portman's Hirth, the leader of the group, from entering the partisan USA and they both travel back towards Canada where Hirth will be arrested. There also a very long scene in a commune with East German farmers who are pacifistic and live together as a family. The Nazi gang don't understand how they don't have a leader or a secret handshake and instead live in harmony without having strict rules. One of their number even decides to stay only to be found guilty of desertion and killed by his so-called friends.

I'd never thought I'd compare a Powell and Pressburger film to an episode of South Park but that's before I'd seen 49th Parralel a film which resembles 'Christmas in Canada' where the four boys travel round Canada trying to find Kyle's brother Ike and during that time they run into a French Canadian, a mountie and a New Foundlander. All of these can be found in this film as can the Scottish Hudson Bayer played by Whisky Galore narrator Finlay Currie who enjoys playing chess over the radio. There are plenty of stereotypes in this film for example having Olivier playing a French Canadian was a mistake and I think the classical Brit actors who play the Nazis were a little too over the top. But it also an interesting film that Powell and Pressberger spent a lot of time working on and thinking about the motivations of the Nazi party. Having the Nazis as the main characters is almost a reverse road movie as they drop off one by one, some dying and others being handed into the police. But notably none of them are credited on the poster instead it is Olivier, Massey and Howard who have been given the lead roles of the three Howard impressed me the most as the character who outwits the Nazis who believe they have a superior intellect. I feel this may've been hailed as a classic if it had got the casting a bit better but as it is it feels a bit dated unlike some of the other P and P works  such as The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp and A Matter of Life and Death, neither of which were nominated which is a great shame.