Capital Celluloid 2023 — Day 309: Mon Nov 6

49th Parallel (Powell, 1941): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 8.30pm


This 35mm presentation, also screening on October 22nd, is part of the Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger season at BFI Southbank.

Chicago Reader review:
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.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.

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