Invaders of the heart… 49th Parallel (1941), BFI Cinema Unbound

You think we hate you, but we don't. It is against our faith to hate. We only hate the power of evil which is spreading over the world. You and your Hitlerism are like the microbes of some filthy disease -- filled with the longing to multiply yourselves until you destroy everything healthy in the world.

 

No, we are not your brothers.

 

Screening on the BFI’s 35mm copy, 49^th Parallel featured a host of stars lining up for their party piece propagandist soliloquy. It’s the skill of The Archers, and especially Emeric Pressburger, who won an Oscar for his script, that none of this felt undeserved or preachy. Sure, Laurence Olivier’s French-Canadian accent made Dick van Dyke’s cockney sound as authentic as Ray Winston in Sexy Beast, but he certainly took one for the team. This was the duo’s third film and it did the job in terms of impressing North America going on to become the most successful British film to date in cinemas.

 

Of all the big hitters it is the Austrian Anton Walbrook who hits the hardest, the words of one enforced migrant expressed through the acting skill of another with such passion that I only realised I was holding my breath halfway through as his character, the leader of a group of Hutterite Christians explained how, though German, they had only found peace and freedom in Canada, with Europe and the fatherland only offering suppression. His speech is in response to one from Eric Portman’s Lieutenant Hirth, a late-comer and true believer in the Nazi cause, who assumes his own rhetoric, mimicking Adolf, will lead to a roomful of “Heil Hitlers” only to completely misjudge the mood.

 

Walbrook’s Peter is a man of peace and strength who forgives the Nazi’s as he condemns the hatred of their ideology in words that again ring true as the World slips towards extremism. I considered just quoting the entire speech… just a few days away from remembrance Sunday and will slaughter ongoing across the world and democracy never more under threat than in the US and even the UK. We never learn.

 

Eric Portman and his men react to Peter's speech

Portman does make for a deliciously evil Nazi though and is central to the film’s treatment of the German’s who escape the sinking of U Boat 37 which gets trapped in Hudson Bay after sinking a Canadian cargo ship. His commander is killed and his superior officer, Lieutenant Kuhnecke (Raymond Lovell), more intelligent and less dogmatic takes charge of a group of six, including Vogel (Niall MacGinnis) the most sympathetic character, and other more typical Nazis.

 

Pressburger fills out even the Germans with personalities but they gradually leave a trail of death and destruction along Canada’s 49^th Parallel as they try to fight, steal and lie their way to Vancouver and from there a rescue in a Japanese ship. On route they first encounter Olivier as Johnnie, le trapper and the excellent Finlay Currie as the factor at the Hudson Bay trading post. There’s “Nick, the Eskimo” played by Ley On and, as with native Canadians elsewhere in the film, he and his tribe are treated as a real characters with agency and who influence the narrative. Pressburger was keen to include all Canadians in his tale and, accent aside, Olivier plays his part well, humorously dismantling Hirth’s earnest belief in his Fuhrer.

 

The Germans steal a plane, brutally killing two Canadian airmen and a number of Inuit, but one of the tribe manages to shoot one of them before the take off. And then there were five. Crashlanding after running out of fuel, Kuhnecke is also killed leaving just four men to trudge on and find the German Hutterite farming community, being greeted by a young girl called Anna (Glynis Johns) before gaining some acceptance with the help of Vogel’s baking skills. After the failure of Hirth’s oratory the group decide to leave and Vogel is invited to stay… and he is executed for desertion and just not being Nazi enough. And then there were three.

Laurence Olivier and Finlay Currie

The group loses a further member during a well-worked scene at an “Indian Rally” in Winnipeg, when, the Mounties take to the loud hailer, knowing the men are about and describing them as the crowd of native Canadians and to look hard at the person next to them. One of the German crew panics and s caught. Every such scene serves the polemic and shows, in this case the power of a united people against “invaders”.

 

Perhaps the strangest encounter is when Hirst and his last surviving colleague encounter and English writer in the wilds, Philip Armstrong Scott (Leslie Howard) who with his relaxed almost whimsical observations on the war being so far away and the importance of art, which will transcend history. All of this is anathema to Hirth, who can only see weakness, decadence and cowardice. After the camp is asleep the German’s jump Scott, tie him up and force him to watch his books, his own papers and his Picasso being burned. Their escape does not go to plan though, and Scott proves he does indeed have the steel they think he lacks appreciation for the arts does not make an Englishman weak.

 

Events conclude at Niagara Falls when Hirth, so close to freedom in neutral USA, meets his match in a Canadian soldier played with relish by Raymond Massey – an actual Canute! It’s another high-octane cameo and a stirring conclusion to this passionate and well-constructed propaganda. As usual with their war films, Powell and Pressburger allowed more depth to their characters than the brief probably required and yet this is exactly what makes them so watchable all these years later and which made them more powerful at the time.

 

Leslie Howard

After all, even Hirth admits that it’s governments and systems that are to blame for the way people are forced to act although as both Peter and Raymond Massey’s Andy Brock explain, it is their freedom to do something about this that defines society. There is no such choice under fascism.

 

Apart from editing from one David Lean there is fine cinematography from Frederick Young, F.R.P.S. which makes the most of stunning locations from the north-west coast to the mountains inland and Niagara’s mesmerising falls. It’s a travelogue of “one of the three great democracies” and as if our souls could not be stirred any more, Ralph Vaughan Williams’ debut score completes the task. 49^th Parallel works on a grand scale to perform miniature operations on the heart.

 

Interestingly American censors cut 19 minutes from the film, including Hirth’s speech when he claims that "Eskimos are like Negros" and "semi-apes, only one degree above the Jews", which had to be taken out to avoid offending segregationists in the American South... some of the views on race were too close to their own. Remarkable. The film was entitled The Invaders for the US, which is apt as the Archers smuggled in a lot of deeper meaning of their own.

 

Raymond Massey

Twice Upon a Time (1953)

 

Andrew Macdonald joined the BFI's James Bell in introducing his grandfather Emeric’s only solo directed film and in reminding us that The Parent Trap was a big film in his family, also pointed out that he never saw his forebear as a directorial sort; as someone who would enjoy the final say. Twice Upon a Time written and directed by Pressburger in 1953, has rarely been screened and the BFI’s transfer of a positive was one of the first screenings since the fifties which hadn’t been included in previous retrospectives.

 

It is, as Andrew says, a children’s film but one filled with his grandad’s wit and character wisdom and which takes an unlikely scenario and makes us smile.

 

Actual twins, Yolande and Charmian Larthe play two children separated when young and split between two divorcing parents played by Elizabeth Allan as Carol-Anne Bailey and Hugh Williams as James Turner. Charmain plays Anne, daughter if Carol-Anne and Yolande is Carol, daughter of ballet composer James. The story is told in flashback by the family doctor, Dr Mathews (Jack Hawkins) as the two discover each other on a skiing holiday with their schools. They soon get close, realise what’s happened and decide to trick their parents by playing each other… it’s a lovely film and Emeric, with the aid of several Archer’s regulars, succeeds in crafting a decent film.

 

Not an experience he ever wanted to repeat though and it’s the mark of maturity that you stick to what you do best and he was a writer of great force and imagination. Again, thanks to this sprawling season, we are all getting more familiar with what Emeric and Michael did best.