"49th Parallel", 1941

[Belle]

I'm putting this thread here for a particular reason. Today in the mail I received this book, "I Live Cinema: The Life and Films of Michael Powell". It's filled with anecdotes, facts and notes about the making of Powell's films, most significantly those in which he collaborated with writer Emeric Pressburger. Initially I was more interested in Powell's work with the great German actor Conrad Veidt and also the Austrian Anton Walbrook. (I was satisfied to read that Veidt was widely loved and highly regarded by his English and American colleagues). Powell said of Veidt, "for us he was the great German cinema!"

In the course of the book I came across the section on "49th Parallel", which was made in 1941 as both entertainment and propaganda for the war effort. The film was shot on location in Canada with interiors filmed in Montreal and London. Having seen this film many years ago I revisited it today in a wonderful restoration. It has a cast of luminaries, but there are the other luminaries like Freddie Young, cinematographer ("Lawrence of Arabia"), editing by David Lean (that name speaks for itself), music by Vaughan Williams (beautiful and stirring) and played by the London Symphony Orchestra.

The score is stirring and it moved me right at the start of the film, as it did in the end. I recommend that people watch this film to remind us all about what was fought and died for in WW2 and how we English-speaking people MUST stick together - not just because of our magnificent heritage but because of our beliefs in freedom. At least, to return to those freedoms fought and died for. The actors and writer define most of those issues very clearly in this film.

Out of the depths of despair in 1941 wartime Britain this is the message to us all in the subsequent generations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXTffkM-ME0