The 49th Parallel
Capsule by Dave Kehr From the Chicago Reader
Retitled The Invaders and cut by 16 minutes for American release, this 1941 film is a typically perverse and entertaining propaganda piece by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. The plot--a German U-boat lands in Canada, and the crew must make it across the U.S. border before they're captured--forces the audience to identify with the enemy, and the forces of freedom are represented by a series of oddballs and misfits--including Laurence Olivier in an out-there performance as a French-Canadian fur trapper and Leslie Howard as a poetry-reading recluse who lays down his volume of Shelley to take on the intruders single-handedly. Somehow, all this deliberate inversion and eccentricity ends up being more stirring than most straight propaganda films--and certainly a lot more imaginative and suspenseful. 123 min.
