I was wondering why the Germans who made it to Winnepeg and then Banff just didn't head south to the border(remember the UNDEFENDED border)and just cross over away from border crossings? Going back to the falls area puts a natural barricade in their way. Didn't Northern Pursuit(1943)w/Errol Flynn have an ending crossing the Niagara River? Or am I thinking of another movie, it's been a while since I've seen it.
shareThey had a sense of the dramatic and wanted to cross the border at an iconic landmark
From Banff (Indian Day) they then went to Lake O'Hara, in the Yoho National Park, BC for the Philip Armstrong Scott segment.
They had headed west to try to get a ship from Vancouver to Japan. When that doesn't work out and only Hirth was left, he was desperate and willing to try anything. He wasn't exactly rational at the best of times.
Steve
At Winnipeg they changed their plan from heading directly south over the Canada/US border to walking west to get to Vancouver, where they hoped to catch a Japanese freighter to Japan. This was not only before the US had entered the war, but before Canada (and the rest of the British Empire) were at war with Japan. (The scene where they decide on this change was cut from the American release, which made the men's sudden shift from getting across the border just a few miles away, to heading thousands of miles west, completely inexplicable.)
It's never explained why Hirth, the last remaining Nazi after the rest were captured or killed, soon began heading back east. We never learn whether he did go to Vancouver but couldn't catch the boat, or whether he headed back east immediately after his encounter with Phillip Armstrong Scott (Leslie Howard). The narrative indicates he sort of zigzagged around for a while, and what's surprising is that there are news reports indicating the authorities were keeping pretty close track of him -- to the point where the radio announcer could say, "The eyes of the world are on southern Ontario."
As much as I like this film, I always thought this aspect of the plot -- Hirth rushing all over, heading back east -- made little sense. He would have done better to have fled across the US border out west. It certainly would have been easier to get across in the sparsely populated west than in the crowded east, and we even see him traveling on a plane -- hardly a safe means of transport for a wanted fugitive. Plus it doesn't seem credible that his movements are being tracked as closely as they are. It's all very dramatic, but weak from both a logical and practical point of view.
And, with all due respect to my more learned friend Steve, I don't think this can be explained away by simply saying Hirth wasn't thinking very clearly by then. Frankly, there's no evidence of him losing his judgment, then or ever. He was mistaken about many things (principally in misjudging Canadians and their society) but this stemmed from ideological ignorance and Nazistic distortions, not erratic or irrational personal judgment.
By the way (re-reading this more than a year later), the OP is mistaken -- Northern Pursuit with Errol Flynn does not involve anyone crossing the American border anywhere. The film takes place entirely within Canada. Same with Warners' Captains of the Clouds. A Yank in the RAF does have a scene of American flyers landing planes en route to Britain near the US-Canadian border in North Dakota, so that they could be hand-pulled across into Saskatchewan and flown thence by RCAF aviators to their final destination -- a ridiculous ploy necessary to technically get around provisions of the U.S. Neutrality Act which forbade direct transfer of American war materials to the Allies. But that's clearly not what the OP was thinking of. He may simply have confused scenes from different movies.
"By the way (re-reading this more than a year later), the OP is mistaken -- Northern Pursuit with Errol Flynn does not involve anyone crossing the American border anywhere. The film takes place entirely within Canada. Same with Warners' Captains of the Clouds. A Yank in the RAF does have a scene of American flyers landing planes en route to Britain near the US-Canadian border in North Dakota, so that they could be hand-pulled across into Saskatchewan and flown thence by RCAF aviators to their final destination -- a ridiculous ploy necessary to technically get around provisions of the U.S. Neutrality Act which forbade direct transfer of American war materials to the Allies. But that's clearly not what the OP was thinking of. He may simply have confused scenes from different movies."
Yes I watched Northern Pursuit a while back and that was not the one I was thinking of. My memory of this other film is kind of vague, but I remember a captured German pilot/soldier being taken to Canada where he escapes from a train and eventually gets to the US across an almost frozen river. It's probably been 5-6 yrs since I've seen it so it would be nice to know the title so I can watch for it on TCM.
Hi SashaDabinski -- I was starting to write a reply trying to figure out which movie you could be thinking of when a thought suddenly hit me: could it be a 1957 British film called The One That Got Away? This was a true story of a Luftwaffe pilot who was shot down and escaped three times from British POW camps, the last one in Canada, when he got away for good. (He was finally shot down and killed over the Channel in 1941.) This man was the only German prisoner to successfully escape from an Allied internment camp in WWII.
I frankly don't recall it well enough to remember whether the incidents you cite happened in this movie. But there were very few wartime films set in Canada, and this does seem to fit at least a few of your memories. Any idea if this was it?
There was also "Operation Elster" where a Nazi sub was supposed to land at Prince Edward Island and meet up with some escaping prisoners
See http://www.powell-pressburger.org/Reviews/41_49P/49P_08.html
Various people have wondered over the years if either of these things could have influenced the story of 49th Parallel
But Franz von Werra, the subject of The One That Got Away didn't escape from the camp in Canada until January 1941 and the news of his escape wasn't made public by the Allies until he got back to Germany in 1941 when Dr Goebbels gladly announced it
Operation Elster didn't happen until 1943
49th Parallel was released in the UK in October 1941 and was filmed through 1940 so it's unlikely if von Werra had any influence
Steve
Hi Steve,
I don't think the OP's question was about whether von Werra's (thanks for jogging my memory about the name!) story influenced 49th. I think he just wondered what film it was in which the incidents he remembered took place. There's obviously no connection between von Werra's tale, or anyone else's, and 49th Parallel.
Yes, I was really just throwing those into the mix in case anyone thought that, and as a general FYI
Steve
Yes that is it. I remember the ending which mentioned that he had been shot down. He had made it all the way thru the US and into Mexico where he was returned to Germany. I'll be looking for it on TCM, THANKS!
shareYes, it's a pretty good movie, and it's available again on DVD after being out of print for a few years, if you're interested. TCM rarely shows it, so you might want to consider the DVD.
But you're welcome -- glad it suddenly came to me. I'm also happy to have finally solved a problem you first posted about 15 months ago. This is one that finally didn't get away!
Strangely, I never questioned why Lieutenant Hirth would have traveled as far west as Banff and Lake O'Hara only to suddenly turn back east. The Rockies would be more of an impenetrable obstacle than he anticipated, the only passages being by rail and a few highways, all of which the authorities were now blockading.
True, he might easily have turned south at some places and crossed the border into the neutral United States without meeting a soul, but we had already seen that the Nazis only knew the propaganda about Canada, not the actualities.
And so, ironically, he tried to stow away on a freight train crossing into the United States at one of the busiest border crossings in the country. This may be, as Steve Crook has already mentioned, a purely cinematic decision, but the film thereby does demonstrate one of the weaknesses of relying upon propaganda.
On the one hand, propaganda makes people easier to lead, while on the other, it also makes them less efficient when operating on their own initiative and knowledge.
My impression is the film makers, being European, did not grasp how big Canada actually is. They equated a trip across Canada to one across Britain. Or they simply threw realism out the window to advance the plot - the fugitives need to zip back and forth across the country - no problem make it so.
What about the decision at the beginning of the film for the sub to travel from the St. Lawrence to Hudson Bay! WTH? When I saw that, I stopped the film rewound back to hear it again. First of all why Hudson Bay, there's nothing there! Second, it's a trip of 2,500 kilometres, one way. Again it's like P&P have no clue to distance involved nor the fact Hudson Bay is northern wilderness. The German High Command I would think would have to approve a side trip of thousands of kilometres to the near arctic. Polar bear viewing in Churchill MB is very popular today, perhaps these Nazis were ahead of the curve .
My impression of the entire film is one of a couple of English film makers getting Canadain geography and life wrong over and over. Leslie Howard is camping in the Rockies with original paintings of Matisse and Picasso in his tent? It's obvious P&P have never been camping anywhere. Their depiction of a Canadian 'gentleman' camping in the wilderness is ridiculous. It's like their frame of reference for this is rich English noblemen on a fox hunt.
Throw in Mounties in red serge along with Indians in head dresses in Banff, and Olivier's hammy Quebecois trapper, the movie's not much more than a travelogue full of Canadian sterotypes.
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