49th PARALLEL

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 152, 22 May 1942, Page 14

49th PARALLEL

(Gaumont British)

O be rather blunt, if it is true (and it apparently is) that the British Ministry of Information put up £25,000 toward the cost of making 49th

Parallel, on the ground that it would be very good propaganda for the war effort, then I can only say that the British taxpayers’ money has been wasted. Actually, questions were asked in the House of Commons when the appropriation was made and before production had begun, and the Select Committee on National Expenditure recorded its " gravest misgivings " about the venture; and while I certainly don’t disapprove on principle of spending public money on film-making, in this case, as it has turned out, those misgivings were fully justified. Maybe some more questions will now be asked. 49th Parallel is frankly a propaganda picture and in the circumstances would not necessarily be the worse for that. What makes its value extremely ques- ’

tionable is that the propaganda has misfired; or, to be more accurate, it has back-fired. It shoots in almost exactly the opposite direction from what I imagine was intended. The trouble is that somebody (producer, director, sponsor, individually or collectively) has completely overlooked a simple, fundamental, psychological fact — which is that if you have six men against six hundred, and the six make a fight of it, the sympathies of every normal person tend to be with the six and not with the six hundred. You can’t help yourself, it’s human nature, no matter how wicked the six may be, no matter how upright the others. Heaven forbid that I should try to baffle you with the science of the "psycho boys" (as Eric Gill calls them) but this is elementary psychology, known to every author of boyhood adventure stories, the. stock-in-trade of nearly every writer of adult thrillers. It’s bred into us, this respect for the man who battles against super-human odds, this sympathy for the hunted rather than the huntets. We lap it up almost from the cradle, with stories of

Robin Hood, of how Horatius held the bridge, and of the gallant few at Thermopylae. And, as I say, it doesn’t make much difference even when the Few are bad and the Many are good; instinctively we take sides with the person who fights in a tight corner. Which explains the popularity of all the novels about heroic crooks, of half the films about gangsters, and why, for example, in another film which I saw last week, Ladies in Retirement, one’s sympathy goes out to the "heroine," a calculating murderess. And don’t forget our own Graham case. Yes, and the psychology holds good, I submit, even when, as in 49th Parallel, the hunted happen to be Nazis and the hunters are ourselves, the fighters for democracy. Ba 2 * POR the story of 49th Parallel is about six Nazis, survivors of the crew of a ‘U-boat sunk in Hudson’s Bay, who get ashore in Canada up there near the Arctic Circle, and who battle their way, with tooth and claw, right down the map in an effort to cross the border into the

neutral United States. Their methods are not pretty, but practically the whole of Canada’s population of eleven millions, plus all their resources, are in the manhunt against them; and so that basic psychological law is in full operation. And if this were not in itself enough to make the film of dubious propaganda valué, there is the additional fact that the Nazis are so realistically and powerfully portrayed (particularly by Eric Portman, as their leader) that you are left with the uncomfortable impression -doubly uncomfortable in a propaganda film-that a true Nazi is imbued with unswerving and completely selfless purpose, untiring energy, boundless resourcefulness, and great courage, and is only to be beaten by trickery. He is more than tough. The picture shows him to be also brutal, callous, and cunning; but nothing else than those other qualities I have mentioned could have taken Lieutenant Hirth (Eric Portman) all the way from Hudson’s Bay to the frontier at Niagara Falls. The five other Germans in the original party fall out one by one, but the fact remains that, despite the terrific odds against him, the leading Nazi does what he sets out to do and crosses the border into America; and he is eventually foiled by what can only be described as a piece of chicanery. He (Continued on next page)

49th PARALLEL , (Continued from previous page) deserves it, of course, but it is still chicanery. Does this sound tc you like good propaganda, worth at least £25.000 of the British taxpayers’ money? %* * * WHY on earth, I want to know, if they were going to make a picture like this, didn’t they reverse the process and allow that psychological law which I have stressed tc operate on a story about six British soldiers, sailors, or airmen who escape, say, from a German prison camp and battle their way, with just as much daring and resourcefulness but a little less brutality, across a hostile Europe? Then they really might have had something. Was it because somebody was determined to make a _ picture showing Canada’s part in the war effort and dedicated, as all the publicity would have us believe, to the theme of the 49th parallel — "that frontier accepted with a handshake and kept undefended ever since"? Now there is a theme really worth making a picture ab_ut, and some day I hope somebody will n.ake it; but it hasn’t been made here. The idea of friendship between Canada and the United States hardly enters into 49th Parallel, except in the very last sequence, and then only when a U.S. Customs official plays a trick on the escaping Nazi and sends him back into Canada (which, incidentally, happens at the 42nd Parallel, not the 49th). As "for Canada’s war effort, we don’t see much of it, though we do see plenty of magnificent scenery and various glimpses of the Canadian people, including Eskimos, Red Indians, and Hutterites (but not the Doukhobors). * * * Alt of the foregoing is not to deny that there are some very good pieces of propaganda in 49th Parallel, just as there are some very good pieces of entertainment apart from the propaganda (though it’s hard. to get apart from that!). I would describe it as a " blitsy" picture; and it comprises four main bits or episodes, each designed to show off the talents of the four " official" stars (Laurence Olivier, Anton Walbrook, Leslie Howard, and Raymond Massey, in that order of appearance), to permit each of these four to voice his sentiments on the war and democracy, and to eliminate

one or other of the Six Little Nazi Boys (who, I am afraid, are undoubtedly the unofficial stars). Olivier is a French-Canadian furtrapper who is killed in the first episode. Anton Walbrook makes what is, I think, the most interesting appearance as well as the most inspiring democratic speech as the leader of a settlement of German Hutterites who lead such an attractive communal life that one of the Nazis is converted to it and is executed by the others for "deserting" tho Third Reich. Leslie Howard is one of those’ effeta peace-loving, culture-loving fellows (his culture includes carrying rourd a Picas.o painting on a camping holiday!) who are tigers when aroused, in the manner of Pimpernel Smith. In spite of all I said previously to the contrary, I am now beginning to suspect that this really is Mr. Howard’s idea of the typical Englishman. Finally, there is Raymond Massey as a tough Canadian soldier, a.w.o.l., who encounters and deals with the last remaining Nazi. And here I must revert to my criticism of 49th Parallel as propaganda. If the film was designed to show among other things, the brutality of the Nazis, why spoil the effect by ending it with the unedifying spectacle of Massey, fresh and husky, advancing like a wild animal upon the utterly exhausted survivor of the German band and beating him up? . * * * ELL, there you have it, the film there was all the talk about. Whatever you think of it as entertainmentand there is no doubt that many of you will think very highly of it-as a weapon of propaganda the gun has certainly back-fired. And who’s going to stop the blast? Perhaps I am,-: for I shall probably make myself unpopular in some quarters with what I have written. It is some satisfaction, therefore, for me to. have discovered, since seeing the picture, that in some other quite responsible quarters my views are substantially supported. And now that my readers have, as it were, been put on their guard against the flaws in the .propaganda, I hope that.none of them will stay away from 49th Parallel because of what I have said about it, if only because I should prefer them to decide for themselves whether they agree with me or not.