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*** “The 49th Parallel.” VidAmerica. $39.98.
An all-star British flag waver film for the 1941 war effort, with a glittering roster: director Michael Powell, co-scripter Emeric Pressburger, composer Ralph Vaughan Williams--and editor David Lean on an early assignment with cinematographer Freddie Young. The plot is an exact reversal of the next Powell-Pressburger movie, “One of Our Aircraft Is Missing.” There, crash-landed RAF pilots try to flee through the Netherlands. Here, a grounded German U-boat commander (Eric Portman) and his crew skedaddle through Canada--battling a patriotic ensemble that includes Laurence Olivier (with an extravagant French accent), Leslie Howard, Raymond Massey, Glynis Johns and the local Eskimos. Interestingly, the less-famous “Aircraft” (Republic, $39.95) is superior: You tend to sympathize with people on the run, anyway--and in “Aircraft” it’s easier to stay with the RAF pilots than, here, with rascally Germans who sport British accents.
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