FILM CLUB - 49th Parallel - One Of Our Aircraft Is Missing

Powell & Pressburger Season

With each new movie released P & P gained further confidence as film makers. Storylines became more adventurous in not following conventions. Until with One of Our Aircraft is Missing they created the effect of watching something happen in time, without any over arching storyline, or romantic interest crowbarred into it.

49th Parallel - 1941
At the beginning of WW2 there was huge concern over German U boat activity cutting the UK's supply lines in the Atlantic. So here we have another film beginning with a German submarine U37  destroying a supply ship hide in the Hudson Bay area. The Canadian air force finds them and destroys the sub. Though five Germans have already been sent out on a mission. The film follows their journey trying to reach and cross the 49th Parallel into the US in order to escape capture and internment. Powell and Pressburger use this simple narrative journey to juxtapose differing views of belief, conviction and freedom, between democracies and authoritarianism.

Finley Currie, Raymond Massey, Trevor Howard, Eric Portman, the inestimable Anton Walbrook and Glynis John in only her fourth film, they're all here. And then there's Laurence Olivier with a frankly bizzare beast of a French Canadian accent. This, along with his tendency to wildly overact, almost unbalances the the early parts of the movie. Fortunately the relaxed easy style of the likes of Portman, Walbrook and Howard, act as an anchor and balances the production. Stylistically Powell made the most of the background drama of the Canadian landscape itself. The beautifully expressionistic camera work by Freddie Young, is smartly edited by David Lean, later to be an acclaimed filmmaker himself.

One of Our Aircraft is Missing - 1942
The first Powell and Pressburger film made under The Archers production company. And you can tell, there is a distinct qualitative difference in style and approach to the three wartime films that preceded it. No longer composed like a filmed play, One of our Aircraft is Missing is a fully fledged film experience. Everything is done to appear as if though its happening in real time. There is no melodramatic music at any point in the movie. Its mostly a film that relies on incidental sound for its heightened drama. The film follows what happens to a plane crew that crashes in Nazi occupied Netherlands. Showing you how they escape with the help of the Dutch underground network, led by brave women such as Else Meertens ( Pamela Brown ) and Jo de Vries (Googie Withers)   

The aircraft bombing raid of Stuttgard is realistically filmed, giving you a vivid sense of what it was like cooped up in a small aircraft on such a dangerous raid. The realism also extends to the acting, which is quite ordinary, downplayed and believable. We have an impression, these days,that the RAF was full of upper class airmen, but that is because most movies about the RAF are stuffed with actors with posh accents. In actuality they only accounted for 30%, the rest being drawn from all areas and levels of society. P & P get that balance right here, with Suffolk, Yorkshire and Welsh accents to be heard just in the one plane crew. Many stalwarts of P & P films are here Eric Portman sporting his real Halifax accent, Bernard Miles, Hugh Williams and a very young Peter Ustinov in his first film role. One of Our Aircraft is Missing is by far and away the best made and performed wartime film, not succumbing to broad caricature or overtly propagandizing. Its a deceptively simple human movie about bravery and camaraderie in a perilous situation. But it's also a great one/ It also marks the true beginning of  Powell & Pressburger's golden era.