Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Best movie of this year hands down!

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

A WWII U-boat crew is stranded in northern Canada. To avoid internment, they must make their way to the border and get into the still-neutral United States.Said Michael Powell, "I hoped it might scare the pants off the Americans." Screenwriter Emeric Pressburger remarked, "Goebbels considered himself an expert on propaganda, but I thought I'd show him a thing or two." After persuading the British and Canadian governments, Powell started location filming in 1940.Now, how effective the film was in getting America into the war, I don't know. Certainly not nearly as effective as Pearl Harbor ended up being. But what you do have is a great war story of Nazis in Canada. The plot has some questionable elements -- the Germans speak very good English -- but the idea of a war thriller is always good if you have the talent to pull it off like Powell does.

Another movie that makes German's look like either idiots or blood thirsty barbarians. You luckily sneak your U-boat across the Atlantic undetected, risking your life for the Fatherland, good job sailor. So why in the world, especially with visibility for miles and miles would you surface your U-boat in the middle of bay in broad daylight!!! Who's that stupid? The people who had to go ashore were already gone, so there was no reason to sit around anyway. Plus they made no effort at all to even submerge the damned thing. AHHHHH! The pilots were all right on target with there bombs too, you got to wonder how much practice did they have at that part of the war. Not a scratch on anyone when the seaplane crashed too. Missed the airbag deployment.

This is an unusual film in many respects. It features splendid music by Vaughan-Williams, and in order to let the sections of music finish on the soundtrack rather than cut it off, we are often treated to extended montage sequences of the magnificence of the wild scenery of Canada, where the film is entirely set. (The 49th parallel is the border between Canada and the United States. In the USA, this film was released under the title 'The Invaders'.) The cinematographer was Freddie Young, whose work with the Indian tepee lighting effects shows his early promise with creative use of light. Camera operator was Skeets Kelly. Together, they did one bold 'avante garde' shot from a small boat as it rams ashore from a lake. This was very quickly cut away from, perhaps even too quickly, by the restless pace imposed by the editor, David Lean, who was soon to become a famous director. Numerous already famous people collaborated on this early wartime propaganda effort, which manages to be relatively light on propaganda and heavy on story. And a good story it is too, written and conceived by Romanian emigree Emeric Pressburger, for which he won a well-deserved Oscar. The film was ably directed by the always talented Michael Powell. The one stand-out bad performance is by Laurence Olivier, who wrongly imagined that he could play a French-Canadian outdoorsman. Despite showing his chest and acting hearty, he fails pathetically to pull this off, and his mechanical mouthing of the accent is far too laboured. He was so often his own worst enemy, by calculating rather than feeling his characters. The opposite is true of the delightful Lesley Howard, who creates a wonderful, eccentric and whimsical character of a vacationing scholar who is on the verge of becoming a Scarlet Pimpernel at any moment (he had made 'Pimpernel Smith' earlier the same year.). Niall MacGinnis is superb as a pathetically regretful Nazi who just wants to go back to being a baker and living a quiet life. Anton Walbrook is magnificent in his intensity as the leader of a pacifist religious sect, and he gets to deliver the best speech in the film. But the finest acting of all is by Eric Portman, who is absolutely terrifying as a fanatical Nazi blind to all reason. Glynis Johns makes an appearance as a fey young girl with a quavery voice, who gets a jibe in at the Nazis by overcoming her innate timidity. This was a very clever propaganda film, because its messages were deeply embedded in an ingenious story line. That story line is innovative and highly dramatic. A German submarine surfaces in Hudson Bay on the Atlantic Coast of Canada, during the period before America was in the War, but Canada, as a British colony, was already a combatant. Six men led by a lieutenant (played by Portman) go ashore in search of food and water supplies, but before they can go far, their submarine is sunk by aerial bombardment, leaving the six men stranded. The Canadian authorities are unaware that these six Nazi seamen are on the loose. The story then becomes the incredible odyssey of their journey across Canada, and the havoc they cause, as they try without food, water, or money to reach Vancouver on the Pacific Coast and take a ship to Japan. Naturally, lots of people get in their way and are killed. This whole project is very well pulled-off indeed, and makes exciting viewing even today.

SYNOPSIS: A shipwrecked U-boat crew hikes across Canada during 1941 in an attempt to make it back to the Fatherland.CONCEPT IN RELATION TO THE VIEWER Differences in ideology and lifestyle are contrasted by a band of Nazis and the down-home plains-folk they encounter as the Germans try and escape across North America. A propaganda film that is meant to show the differences between democracy and dictatorship.PROS AND CONS At first, I didn't know what to make of this film. It started a bit slow and didn't really seem to have a focus. Add to this, the early appearance of Laurence Oliver as a French-Canadian trapper who was a bit on the irritating side. This may have been accurate, since I haven't met many French-Canadian trappers. For all I know, they may indeed by pompous, arrogant jerks.After the first half hour of the film, it settles down into a 'journey' film about the Nazis and all the people they meet along the way. Each encounter is meant to show the differences in the ideology between the two nationalities. With each successive encounter, the Nazis are whittled down by desertion, capture or death.The more the film went on, the more comical the Nazis became. At almost every encounter the Germans took the opportunity to glorify the master plans of Der Fuhrer. After every fiery speech glorifying the Nazi ideal they are met with blank stares from the locals who see them as mindless robots that have no clue about the the world they find themselves in.The film is an early tour-de-force for some great talent. Laurence Oliver is young and a bit too edgy in his role as the trapper. Leslie Howard (after his stint as Ashley Wilkes in Gone With The Wind) is engaging as the odd ball writer living in the woods and studying Indians. I didn't realize it until I was reading the credits, but the young girl on the Huterite farm is a very young Glynis Johns (I had a crush on her as a kid). Raymond Massey is out of his usual character as an AWOL Canadian soldier. The cinematography is by Freddie Young, who went on to Oscar fame in some of the classic Hollywood films of the 1950s. Last but not least is a score by Raugh Van Williams.In the end, this is a morality tale meant to show Canadians what they were fighting for in WWII. Some of the cinematography is beautiful and the acting is entertaining if not somewhat over done in places. The title to the film refers to the border between the United States and Canada. At the end of the film, the remaining Nazis try to escape into the United States (which had not yet entered the war). Needless to say, the United States saves the day but not in the way you might expect. This was an entertaining film that left me smiling but its message might be lost on the younger viewers of today.