![]() Despite a heavy Yorkshire accent, Portman is utterly compelling as the brutal but determined German officer who lets nothing stop his flight to safety. The cast member who received the most acclaim for his work here, however, was Eric Portman, a noted Shakespearian actor whose career dated back to the mid 1920s. Other cast members, among them Finlay Currie, Anton Walbrook and Niall MacGinnis, were relatively unknown to American audiences but had long, successful careers in Europe. Massey was persuaded to make the film by his brother, who was then the Canadian High Commissioner in London. Canadian Raymond Massey, having just scored in the title role of Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940) and as the abolitionist John Brown in Santa Fe Trail (1940), took the brief but plum role of the runaway Canadian soldier. Yet, the two actors were more than eager to take on small roles in this picture (although Olivier's part almost went to Charles Boyer). Olivier was the hottest new star from England, having recently enjoyed commercial and critical acclaim in Pride and Prejudice (1940), Rebecca (1940) and Wuthering Heights (1939), with Best Actor OscarĀ® nods for the latter two. When shooting began, Howard was still basking in his successes in Gone with the Wind (1939) and Intermezzo: A Love Story (1939), the movie that introduced Ingrid Bergman to American audiences. ![]() Leslie Howard as the writer and Laurence Olivier as the trapper were then perhaps the biggest stars to come out of the U.K., highly sought after on both sides of the Atlantic. One of the reasons for the movie's high quality is the superb ensemble cast, most of them major British stars working for drastically reduced wages because they believed in the film. One by one, the number of Germans is reduced until only the most vicious, evil Nazi among them is left, stowing away on a railroad car with a drunken AWOL Canadian soldier to the United States.and safety. ![]() Along the way, they imprison and kill a French-Canadian trapper, steal a plane but are shot down by Eskimos, hide out in a remote community of Hutterites (a German Christian sect similar to the Amish), and encounter a writer on a fishing vacation whose contemplative nature gives way to fierce patriotism. The Germans realize their only hope is to make their way out of the country, preferably to the then-neutral U.S. Lawrence, stranding the small group that has gone ashore searching for much-needed supplies. To put it briefly, the story follows a crew of Germans whose U-boat (submarine) is sunk by Royal Canadian Air Force bombers in the Gulf of St. A recounting of the plot would likely sound preposterous and give no indication of the quality of this British-made film. One of the most unusual films to come out of the World War II era, 49th Parallel (1941) was unabashed propaganda, yet no less gripping for that.
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