Movie |
Mountain | Canada
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Budget 140,000 USD
Box Office Collection 5,275,000 USD
On a trip home to Wales, Niall MacGinnis was stopped and searched by police. He was arrested as a German spy when the police found a photo in his wallet of MacGinnis dressed in a German sailor's uniform, standing next to what appeared to be a U-boat. In fact, it was a publicity photo from MacGinnis' role in this movie. MacGinnis spent several days in jail before documents were sent from London verifying that he had been in the movie.
Producer and Director Michael Powell forgot that Newfoundland was a Crown Colony, and not a part of Canada, and when they moved the full-sized submarine model there, it was impounded by Customs and Excise, which demanded that import duty be paid. The matter was finally resolved when Powell appealed to the Governor of Newfoundland, citing their work for the war effort. Newfoundland finally became a Canadian province in 1949.
Peter Cushing had gone to Hollywood before the war, but things hadn't worked out too well, and he ended up doing a variety of odd jobs, which is how he came to be making props (not acting) on this movie. One day he had the job of making flags for model boats to be pushed around a map, and he made a lot of swastikas and laid them out in his digs. They were found by his landlady, who promptly called the police.
The submarine used in the opening scenes was a replica built in the Halifax shipyards. The Canadian government, although cooperative in the production, could not spare one of its own submarines, which were then patrolling waters in defense of its borders.
Screenwriter Emeric Pressburger said, "Goebbels (Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Propaganda Minister) considered himself a master of propaganda, but I thought I'd show him a thing or two." Ironically, Pressburger's status in Britain, at the time, was as an enemy alien. He was born and raised in Hungary, which had allied itself with Nazi Germany. So when he returned from filming in Canada, he found himself imprisoned and threatened with deportation. Thanks to the intervention of Producer and Director Michael Powell and the Ministry of Information, this did not happen.
"[first lines] Prologue: I see a long, straight line athwart a continent. No chain of forts, or deep flowing river, or mountain range, but a line drawn by men upon a map, nearly a century ago, accepted with a handshake, and kept ever since. A boundary which divides two nations, yet marks their friendly meeting ground. The 49th parallel: the only undefended frontier in the world."
"Andy Brock: The government says, "We want men to fight the Nazis, join today." So I joined. I figured they were in a hurry. That was three hundred and eighty seven days ago. Four divisions and a lot of drafts have gone overseas, and what's number B987642 doing? Guarding the Chippewa Canal. Who'd want to steal it anyway?"
