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Forty-Ninth Parallel Overview:

Forty-Ninth Parallel (1941) was a Drama - War Film directed by Michael Powell and produced by Michael Powell and George H. Brown.

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Forty-Ninth Parallel Quotes:

[last lines]
Andy Brock: Put 'em up Nazi... No not that way.
[He raises his hands to fight]
Andy Brock: This way. Cuz I'm not askin for those pants... I'm just taking 'em.
Andy Brock: The government says, "We want men to fight the Nazis, join today." So I joined. I figured they were in a hurry. That was three hundred and eighty seven days ago. Four divisions and a lot of drafts have gone overseas, and what's number B987642 doing? Guarding the Chippewa Canal. Who'd want to steal it anyway?
Philip Armstrong Scott: Nazis? That explains your arrogance, stupidity, and bad manners.
Andy Brock: [to Hirth] I can grouse about the food, and the C.O. and anything I blamed please. And that's more than you with your Gestapo and your stormtroopers and your Aryan bourgeoisie. Ahhh, nuts. What's the good of talking to you. You can't even begin to understand democracy. We own the right to be fed up with anything we damn please and say so out loud when we feel like it.
Lieutenant Hirth: Yes, I am a Nazi. Heil Hitler!
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Forty-Ninth Parallel Facts
According to the book 'The Golden Gong - Fifty years of the Rank Organisation, its films and its stars' by Quentin Falk, the Rank Organisation stepped into save the " . . . wartime propaganda film '49th Parallel' when Ministry of Information money ran short of completion."
Tony Thomas in his book 'The Great Adventure Films' states that this film " . . . was begun in April of 1940 and took eighteen months to complete. More than two-thirds of it was shot in Canada and required a great deal of travel. The Canadian government assisted the film company by giving facilities and loaning service-men and policeman whenever necessary, but the Royal Canadian Navy declined to allow the use of a submarine in the role of the U-37 since the few they had were actively engaged in real warfare. The film company solved their problem by commissioning a shipyard in Halifax, Nova Scotia, to build them a replica of a German U-Boat."
This movie represents one of a select group of a few World War II submarine movies which have won the one single Academy Award. Most of them have won their single Oscar in a technical category, that's just only the one Oscar in either special effects or sound editing. These movies include Crash Dive; The Enemy Below; Torpedo Run and U-571. The non-WW II sub-movie, The Hunt for Red October also won just the one Oscar as did the WW 2 part sub-movie 49th Parallel, but for Best Original Story.
Emeric Pressburger said, "Goebbels Josef Goebbels, Nazi Propaganda Minister considered himself a master of propaganda but I'd thought I'd show him a thing or two". Ironically, Pressburger's status in Britain at the time was as an enemy alien, so when he returned from filming in Canada he found himself imprisoned and threatened with deportation. Thanks to the intervention of Michael Powell and the Ministry of Information, this did not happen.
In the final scene of the film, showing the box car carrying the German sailor and Canadian soldier being returned from the U.S. to Canada, shows the train moving backwards right to left over the Niagara River which is flowing towards the screen. This is a geographic impossibility: the Niagara River flows south to north, with the U.S. shore always west of the Canadian shore. As a result, the film shows the train moving from Canada to the U.S.; a correct shot would have shown either the train moving left to right or the river flowing away from the screen.
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