49th parallel
(DVD) 

Originally released as a motion picture in 1941.

Booklet includes essays "The war effort" by Charles Barr and "49th Parallel" by Michael Powell [1941 premiere speech].

Director of photography, Frederick Young ; editor, David Lean ; with the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams, musical director Muir Mathieson with the London Symphony Orchestra ; art director, David Rawnsley ; Canadian advisor, Nugent M. Clougher.

Leslie Howard, Laurence Olivier, Raymond Massey, Anton Walbrook, Eric Portman, Richard George, Raymond Lovell, Niall MacGinnis, Peter Moore, John Chandos, Basil Appleby, Finlay Currie, Ley On, Glynis Johns, Charles Victor, Frederick Piper, Tawera Moana, Eric Clavering, Charles Rolfe, Theodore Salt, O.W. Fonger.

As the voice-over proclaims, the 49th parallel is the only undefended frontier in the world. The parallel is the goal of a small group of Nazis, survivors of a U-boat that has been spotted and sunk in Hudson Bay, deep in Canadian waters. The United States is not yet at war with Germany, and if Corporal Hirth and his six crew members can reach it, they can be repatriated to Germany with no fuss. But their trek across Canada becomes a fierce struggle to survive, as they encounter and are opposed in turn by Johnnie the trapper, a small Hutterite community, a Canadian intellectual, and a Canadian soldier gone AWOL.

Not rated.

DVD; Region 1, NTSC; Dolby Digital mono; aspect ratio 1.33:1.

In English with optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing.