The 49th Parallel (1941)

Word & Song by Anthony Esolen

We’ve talked about friendship this week at Word and Song, and that usually means that we’re dealing with persons. But is it possible for nations to be friendly with one another? If that’s so, what can such friendship mean? Is it just a term we use when the nations aren’t fighting all the time? Or does it imply that the nations are bound by ties of gratitude, mutual help, and a shared history or culture?
Our Film of the Week, The 49th Parallel, was intended as a plea for help, from one friend to another. That is, the English, who of course had all the nations of the Commonwealth on their side, including that grand and unique nation of Canada, wanted the Americans to enter the war against the Nazi regime. Goebbels, misunderstanding quite badly both American feelings and American affection for our cousins across the ocean, thought that he could win the United States over to the German side.

By the time The 49th Parallel had made its way to the screen, however, the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor, and the United States was in the war on both fronts. So the immediate political use to which the director, Michael Powell, and the screenplay writer Emeric Pressburger wished to put the film had already been accomplished. And yet the film is quite moving and powerful as a tribute to the kind of nation that the Canadians wanted to be, at their best, and also as a gesture of gratitude and appreciation for their southern neighbor. For, as the voice-over says at the beginning of the film, the forty-ninth parallel is unique in the world. It is merely a line on the map, well over a thousand miles long. It marks no river or mountain range. It is undefended. It requires no defense. And my family and I speak now from over twenty years of experience: we love Canada, and though we see that the people of each nation think they know more about their neighbors than they really do, we are always struck by the welcome we receive there, and the good cheer of the people, especially of the common folk who live far from the cosmopolitan cities.

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The film begins with Nazis from a submarine, stranded on the banks of Hudson Bay. They try to make their way back to Germany by violence and fraud, but at every step they are frustrated not by Canadian vindictiveness and aggression, but by the dogged good sense and moral uprightness of the people. These show up in a variety of forms. When, for example, the Germans storm the lonely trading post on the bay, a hundred or so miles northwest of Churchill, Manitoba, the nearest town, they find an English-speaking Factor (that is, the company Agent, superbly played by Finlay Currie) and a French Canadian trapper named Johnny (Laurence Olivier). Those two, as we see before the Germans arrive, haven’t seen one another in over a year, because that’s how long Johnny’s been alone in the wilderness, but it’s a grand reunion they’re enjoying, despite the difference in language. In fact, the Agent plays chess, over the radio, every night with a friend of his in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and when that chess game doesn’t go on as always, the friend in the United States knows that something may be wrong, so he sends an alert to Winnipeg. Johnny, who hasn’t seen a newspaper in a long time, doesn’t even know that there’s a war on, and doesn’t care about it — can’t believe that France would bother about the Germans invading Poland, and then can’t believe that Canada would bother about it. But when the German commander tries to persuade him to cast his lot with the Nazis, because if the Nazis win, the French Canadians will be free to have their own schools and speak their own language, Johnny has a great laugh at their expense. “We ‘av our own schools already!” he cries. I won’t spoil matters by telling you what happens to Johnny, except to say that he plays the part of a hero, as does the Agent.
So it goes on: the Nazis — fewer and fewer, as it happens, as the film proceeds, as one by one they are picked off, and in very different circumstances, as each of them is portrayed as a sharply distinct individual — make their way into the prairies of Manitoba, where they come up against a community of peace-loving Hutterites, led — though “led” is an unusual word to use, as we see — by one Peter (Anton Walbrook, who gets the most powerful speech in the film). They try to use persuasion again, but it won’t work, because some of these same Hutterites have fled to Canada away from the Nazis, and one of them, Anna (Glynis Johns, in one of her earliest roles), knows them for the murderers they are. On to Winnipeg, to the Canadian Rockies (where they meet up with an eccentric art collector and adventurer, played by Leslie Howard), back east by train to the border crossing at Niagara Falls — and what happens in the freight car between the German commander and a Canadian soldier absent without leave (Raymond Massey, who in fact was a Canadian), winds up the film with a climax that is poetic justice in sublime comic fashion.
It would have been easy for the writer to fall into caricature, but he doesn’t. The commander (Eric Portman) is a true believer, but no fool. The most sympathetic of the Nazis wants to stay behind with the Hutterites, as a baker; he longs for a human life again. The youngest of the troop is but a boy, sly and wicked and cold. They are human beings in an evil cause, and we see some of the ways the evil has gotten into them — or not. And the Canadians? They don’t need to be saints. Simply being Canadians will do!

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Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is an online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, on words, classic hymns, poems, films, and popular songs, as well a weekly podcast for paid subscribers, Poetry Aloud or Anthony Esolen Speaks. Paid subscribers also receive audio-enhanced posts and access to our full archive and to comments and discussions. To support this project, please join us as a free or paid subscriber. We value all of our subscribers, and we thank you for reading Word and Song!

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