Errol Flynn, after his comic turn in "Thank Your Lucky Stars", was back to fighting the bad guys, this time in northern Canada. "Northern Pursuit" is often compared to the 1941 British film "49th Parallel" so I decided to watch both and compare them.
The two films are superficially similar: they are both about a small group of Nazis moving, (with startling ease), across the vastness of Canada and trying to escape the authorities. In the earlier film, they have already wreaked destruction and just want to escape. In the latter, they are planning to wreck things and are foiled. The 1941 film was filmed on location in various spots around Canada. The 1943 film is studio bound, except for shot clearly done by a stunt unit at Sun Valley. A very large difference is that the 1941 film focuses on the Nazis and shows them to be of different types, including one who decides he'd rather stay at a religious commune and resume his former profession as a baker. Another is more interested in making machines work than in politics and doesn't think much of his commander. The three most fanatical of the original 6 fugitives make it the farthest. This was a controversial thing at the time: Nazis were supposed to be shown as hate-filled bad guys only and the 1943 film follows that command, although both films show dedicated Nazis as bullies and murderers in uniform.
The 1943 film focuses on the efforts of the Canadian authorities, especially a Mountie played by Flynn who goes undercover, to foil their plans and bring them to justice. In the earlier film, the good guys are in the background. In for foreground are the good people of Canada, a French Canadian trapper (Lawrence Oliver), an innocent young Hutterite woman - she's just turned 16, (Glynis Johns), an author (Leslie Howard) and a farmer who is AWOL from the Army but still a patriot, (Raymond Massey). The film is really about the interactions between these people and the Nazis and the varied reactions of the fugitives to them. The Flynn film suggests that there were pockets of active Nazi supporters among the German population of Canada. The are absent from the first film. The 1943 film is about Flynn's battles against the bad guys, which, in the end, seem to anticipate the James Bond films. (It's interesting to imagine Flynn as 007: Ian Fleming said he had David Niven in mind. He wound up with the rough-edged Sean Connery. The on-screen Flynn seems to have too much charm and be too gentlemanly with the ladies for the role but if the films were made in the 40's, I'll bet he would have gotten the role.)
Both films have an airplane crash: one that kills a couple of the Nazis in the 1941 film and a shoot-out between Flynn and the remaining bad guys, including their sneering leader, Helmut Dantine, as the plane is crashing that reminded me a bit of the end of Goldfinger. The plot of the 1943 film stretches credulity: the Nazis have smuggled in the parts to assemble a bomber in western Canada before the war and have now sent in a crew to find it, build it and then fly across Canada, to bomb the St. Lawrence canals, (this was before the modern seaway). The Nazis of the 49th Parallel are part of a U-Boat crew that has already sunk several ships in the St. Lawrence, made their way to Hudson's Bay, (around Newfoundland and Quebec), where their boat got sunk and they are the survivors, who are left stranded, presumably on the west side of the bay. They somehow make their way to Winnipeg and then walk to British Columbia, where they hope to get a boat to Japan. The last survivor, their leader, played by Eric Portman, is last seen unconscious in the wilderness around Banff, then in an airplane and finally in the boxcar of a train in Ontario. It begs credibility.
Flynn gives a smooth, under-stated but effective performance as a Mountie of German desent who is loyal to Canada but pretends not to be in order to infiltrate the fifth columnists, which include Gene Lockhart as a dedicated but foolish spy, and discern and stop Dantine's plans. The highlight of the film is Dantine's entrance, which involves a German sub surfacing through a symbolic layer of ice, Dantine's team disembarking, getting transportation from a local Indian tribe and then being caught in a landslide that leave Dantine alone and unconscious, freezing to death until Flynn and a fellow Mountie, played by John Ridgley, (Eddie Mars in "The Big Sleep"), find him. Flynn's early friendliness and deadly showdown in the finale with Dantine bring to mind his relationship with Surat Khan in "The Charge of the Light Brigade", as does the fact that Errol saves the bad guy at the beginning of the film and kills him at the end. Flynn's character has some heartbreak in that he's got to separate himself from his fiancé, (played adequately by the forgotten Julie Bishop), and friends by pretending to turn traitor. The film ends with a cheesy reference to Flynn's rape trial when he pledges love and loyalty to Bishop and then, hugging her, turns to the camera and says "What am I saying?" It must have been painful to play such scenes.
Both are reasonably entertaining films from the war years that emphasize the threat of the Nazis and the inadequacy of apathy and complacency in the face of that threat. "49th Parallel" is the better drama, "Northern Pursuit" the more exciting film. My cursory research into Canada during the war didn't reveal any problems with German immigrants supporting Hitler or native peoples, (as in "North Pursuit"), thinking they could be better off under the Germans. They do avoid any reference to opposition to the war in Quebec, where there was some loyalty to Vichy France. There was U-boat activity in the St. Lawrence but it seems to have mostly been in the period 1942-44, not 1940, when "49th Parallel was made.
The two films are superficially similar: they are both about a small group of Nazis moving, (with startling ease), across the vastness of Canada and trying to escape the authorities. In the earlier film, they have already wreaked destruction and just want to escape. In the latter, they are planning to wreck things and are foiled. The 1941 film was filmed on location in various spots around Canada. The 1943 film is studio bound, except for shot clearly done by a stunt unit at Sun Valley. A very large difference is that the 1941 film focuses on the Nazis and shows them to be of different types, including one who decides he'd rather stay at a religious commune and resume his former profession as a baker. Another is more interested in making machines work than in politics and doesn't think much of his commander. The three most fanatical of the original 6 fugitives make it the farthest. This was a controversial thing at the time: Nazis were supposed to be shown as hate-filled bad guys only and the 1943 film follows that command, although both films show dedicated Nazis as bullies and murderers in uniform.
The 1943 film focuses on the efforts of the Canadian authorities, especially a Mountie played by Flynn who goes undercover, to foil their plans and bring them to justice. In the earlier film, the good guys are in the background. In for foreground are the good people of Canada, a French Canadian trapper (Lawrence Oliver), an innocent young Hutterite woman - she's just turned 16, (Glynis Johns), an author (Leslie Howard) and a farmer who is AWOL from the Army but still a patriot, (Raymond Massey). The film is really about the interactions between these people and the Nazis and the varied reactions of the fugitives to them. The Flynn film suggests that there were pockets of active Nazi supporters among the German population of Canada. The are absent from the first film. The 1943 film is about Flynn's battles against the bad guys, which, in the end, seem to anticipate the James Bond films. (It's interesting to imagine Flynn as 007: Ian Fleming said he had David Niven in mind. He wound up with the rough-edged Sean Connery. The on-screen Flynn seems to have too much charm and be too gentlemanly with the ladies for the role but if the films were made in the 40's, I'll bet he would have gotten the role.)
Both films have an airplane crash: one that kills a couple of the Nazis in the 1941 film and a shoot-out between Flynn and the remaining bad guys, including their sneering leader, Helmut Dantine, as the plane is crashing that reminded me a bit of the end of Goldfinger. The plot of the 1943 film stretches credulity: the Nazis have smuggled in the parts to assemble a bomber in western Canada before the war and have now sent in a crew to find it, build it and then fly across Canada, to bomb the St. Lawrence canals, (this was before the modern seaway). The Nazis of the 49th Parallel are part of a U-Boat crew that has already sunk several ships in the St. Lawrence, made their way to Hudson's Bay, (around Newfoundland and Quebec), where their boat got sunk and they are the survivors, who are left stranded, presumably on the west side of the bay. They somehow make their way to Winnipeg and then walk to British Columbia, where they hope to get a boat to Japan. The last survivor, their leader, played by Eric Portman, is last seen unconscious in the wilderness around Banff, then in an airplane and finally in the boxcar of a train in Ontario. It begs credibility.
Flynn gives a smooth, under-stated but effective performance as a Mountie of German desent who is loyal to Canada but pretends not to be in order to infiltrate the fifth columnists, which include Gene Lockhart as a dedicated but foolish spy, and discern and stop Dantine's plans. The highlight of the film is Dantine's entrance, which involves a German sub surfacing through a symbolic layer of ice, Dantine's team disembarking, getting transportation from a local Indian tribe and then being caught in a landslide that leave Dantine alone and unconscious, freezing to death until Flynn and a fellow Mountie, played by John Ridgley, (Eddie Mars in "The Big Sleep"), find him. Flynn's early friendliness and deadly showdown in the finale with Dantine bring to mind his relationship with Surat Khan in "The Charge of the Light Brigade", as does the fact that Errol saves the bad guy at the beginning of the film and kills him at the end. Flynn's character has some heartbreak in that he's got to separate himself from his fiancé, (played adequately by the forgotten Julie Bishop), and friends by pretending to turn traitor. The film ends with a cheesy reference to Flynn's rape trial when he pledges love and loyalty to Bishop and then, hugging her, turns to the camera and says "What am I saying?" It must have been painful to play such scenes.
Both are reasonably entertaining films from the war years that emphasize the threat of the Nazis and the inadequacy of apathy and complacency in the face of that threat. "49th Parallel" is the better drama, "Northern Pursuit" the more exciting film. My cursory research into Canada during the war didn't reveal any problems with German immigrants supporting Hitler or native peoples, (as in "North Pursuit"), thinking they could be better off under the Germans. They do avoid any reference to opposition to the war in Quebec, where there was some loyalty to Vichy France. There was U-boat activity in the St. Lawrence but it seems to have mostly been in the period 1942-44, not 1940, when "49th Parallel was made.