Very Cool!!!

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

First thing you have to do after seeing this film is hop on over to the photo gallery and check out the theatrical posters. There's a couple with Laurence Olivier playing a virile French-Canadian and carrying a buxom, tightly clad, high heeled blonde babe in his burly arms. Problem is that the only women in the film were members of a Hutterite Community and the only blonde with braids was a very young Glynis Johns telling everyone that she was "not yet sixteen". Another problem was that she was never even within earshot of Olivier much less lugged around by him.The film is actually a series of stories set in various areas in Canada. On of the "user reviews" complained about the Americans in Hollywood who were so clueless as to Canadian Geography ... thing is, though, it was a Canadian film.The trivia section on the IMDb page is worth reading for the political background on the film.It's worth watching if only to see poor Laurence Olivier trying to sound like he is a French-Canadian trapper.

Yes, it is (was) propaganda. But never has there been a more curiously right and true epitome of the sloppy yet resilient defense of transcontinental democracy than this. Canada wins because Canada is a mess; the Nazi neatness and demand for clear-cut lines falters, and in the end is clobbered with a roundhouse right. So long as I live, I will love this film; it's P&P at their best, and the Vaughan WIlliams score is second to none. What else can one say? I wish I were Canadian.And since the IMDb, to which I contributed long before it became such a commercial concern, insists that I have at least 10 lines of text, I will keep on jabbering for a few more lines, in order to preserve the above comments for posteriority ...

One of the more interesting World War II propaganda films, due to outstanding writing (by Emeric Pressburger), direction (by Michael Powell), and performances. The opening credits and sequences may be confusing. The story involves six Nazis making their way from Hudson Bay (in northeastern Canada) to cross the "49th Parallel" (the United States/Canadian border), after their U-boat (submarine warship) is damaged. At the time the film was made, the U.S. would have been a "safe" (neutral) country. Also, the film does not "star" Leslie Howard and Lawrence Olivier - rather, the lead actor is Eric Portman (as Hirth).Mr. Portman and crew do very well in their roles. The most interesting aspect of the film is that the Germans are written to include a sympathetic Nazi, who wavers in his support for the Fuehrer. The most satisfying of the film's loosely threaded stories involves the sympathetic Nazi bonding with a Canadian immigrant settlement, led by Anton Walbrook (as Peter). This, and the segment with Raymond Massey (as Andy Brock), is where you'll find the filmmakers delivering their most palpable (and eloquent) sermonettes. The film is too episodic for its own good - one story, with more focus on Portman's crew, would have sufficed.****** 49th Parallel (10/8/41) Michael Powell ~ Eric Portman, Leslie Howard, Laurence Olivier

I had to replay the movie and sit with a map. One reader asked why planes would be looking for a U-boat in the Hudson Bay. An Eskimo saw one going west through the Hudson Strait."Wolstenhome" was mentioned on a bulletin board in Winnepeg. That was known as Eric Cove, Quebec, or Ivujivik on the Ungava Peninsula. So that places the sinking of the U-boat in the northwestern corner of Quebec. This explains the French-Canadian. They also show a view on a map going south over the Belcher Islands, in the eastern Hudson Bay. This may be a part of a large meteor crater.So how does that tie in with "let's follow the rail line along the coast to Lake Winnipeg" ? That lake is nowhere near a coast. They seem to jump from the western side of Hudson's Bay to the eastern side & back. The bulletin board said an oil slick was found in Lake Winnipeg, where the sea plane crashed, more than a thousand kilometers from James Bay. Aside from that, the movie was well done.