49th PARALLEL***** - Pantheon Film Of The Month

49th PARALLEL aka THE INVADERS is a fascinating piece of British propaganda from 1941, with a deeply nuanced view of World War Two, but ultimately arguing for the US to enter the war. It was created by the iconic pairing of Michael Powell (director) and Emeric Pressburger (writer) who went on to create masterpieces like THE RED SHOES.  Behind the lens, we have a young David Lean as editor and DP Freddie Young, both of whom would go on to collaborate on LAWRENCE OF ARABIA. And on screen, we have Laurence Olivier with a laughable Quebecois accent, as well as Leslie Howard (GONE WITH THE WIND) and the legendary Anton Walbrook.

The plot is radical insofar as it centres the narrative on a handful of Nazi submariners who come ashore in Canada and have to journey incognito to the US which is still neutral. On the way, they meet Olivier's Quebecois trapper who doesn't even know the war has started, and posits the radical idea that all men must have some goodness inside of them, for he wouldn't shoot Polish women and children. That said, as propaganda, the film is careful to show him as saying his loyalty is to Canada and thus Britain, not to France, as an ally of Germany. 

As the film goes on, the Nazis take shelter with a kind of German emigre mormon community, and one of them starts to question what they are doing, which again feels radical for a propaganda film and reflects all the nuance and humanity that Pressburger (an "enemy alien" - ludicrous - in Britain at the time). But as these things go, naturally the Nazis must come to a bad end, and show the valiance of the Canadians along the way. This is most eloquently and powerfully displayed in Anton Walbrook's monologue roughly half-way through the film, where he explains why immigrants left famine and persecution in Europe and came to Canada for peace, security, tolerance and freedom. It remains incredibly stirring stuff.  

It's equally impressive to consider how this film was made - partly funded by the UK taxpayer - filmed on location in Canada when travel was both restricted and dangerous - with an international cast of major talent, often working at half scale or donating their fees to charity. Freddy Young's black and white photography is superb and most of all, we have a score by Ralph Vaughan Williams. It is no surprise that this film was a huge commercial success, and apparently remains once of the highest grossing British film in the US of all time.

49th PARALLEL was released in 1941 and won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. 

Random DVD round-up 2 - THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS aka ONE WOMAN'S STORY

Filmed after the superlative trilogy of BRIEF ENCOUNTER, GREAT EXPECTATIONS and OLIVER TWIST, David Lean's THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS is criminally overlooked. However, thanks to the British Film Institute, you can now watch it on restored DVD. Marvelous! The movie shows us what happens when two adults - passionately attracted but married to others - decide to rekindle an affair. Instead of abnegation, we have reckless indiscretion. And instead of a cuckold who patiently waits for his dutiful wife to return, we have a domineering, calculating husband who decides that he detests his wife. Moreover, he files for divorce naming both his wife and her lover. Given the period in which the movie was filmed, this would've been seen as a cruel (and yet bracingly honest?) act.

THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS sees David Lean in a quasi-Sirkian fit of expressionism. It contains a powerful central performance from Claude Rains as the cuckold and Trevor Howard is fine as the adulterer - pleading for a romantic love as opposed to a companionable compromise. If there is any fault with the film it's in the casting of Ann Todd as the wife - or rather in the fact that we never really understand how she's feeling. She remains enigmatic - a real flaw in a movie that's basically a series of character studies in extremis.

THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS was originally released in 1949. It is available on DVD, restored thanks to the British Film Institute.

BRIEF ENCOUNTER - pure class

86 minutes of pure cinematic class, and how lucky we are that it is back on UK screens across the UK for your viewing pleasure on Valentine's Day. In some ways, this is rather an odd choice for a date movie as it is not the usual self-indulgent mush where boy meets girl, they fall in love and they end up together. Rather, this is a story of unconsummated love. Fans of Wong Kar Wei's IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE, will recognise the potent mixture of melancholy and moral correctness.

The film is based on a short story by that acerbic wit, Noel Coward - the last person we can accuse of being a delusional romantic. He tells us about Laura and Alec, both married to good but rather stiff people, who meet by chance at a railway station. They start to meet every Thursday and fall in love. But a combination of practical obstacles and old-fashioned respect for the married state prevents them from acting upon their passion. From such a simple but poignant tale, director David Lean creates one of the best-loved and most admired movies in British cinema history*. He perfectly evokes the "niceness" of small-town British life as well as the complete impossibility of conducting a clandestine relationship in such a community. The two lead actors - upon whom the movie rests almost entirely - are marvellous. And while their old-fashioned accents might sound odd to contemporary viewers at first, we are soon too engrossed in this quietly tragic affair to care about such superficialities.

BRIEF ENCOUNTER was originally released in 1946. David Lean won the Grand Prize at Cannes. Celia Johnson was nominated for the Best Actress Oscar but lost out to Olivia de Havilland in the soon-to-be-forgotten TO EACH, HIS OWN. It also lost the Best Directing and Best Screenplay Oscars to the also forgotten THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES. It wasn't even nominated for Best Picture.

*And I have no doubt that part of the reason why Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto is played incessantly in UK concert halls is because it is featured heavily in this flick.