This movie is not good in spite of being propaganda. It is a propaganda movie, and bad. Every episode is aimed at delivering a message, not for drama. The characters are all cameos - you feel that famous actors were brought in for the weight their prestige lends to the message, rather than for the talent they bring to the production. The events are utterly unbelievable, the storytelling choppy and episodic.
It was a bold stroke to put the Germans on an epic trek through Canada, but every time you start to empathize with the adventurers, the movie slaps your hand, delivers a sermon, and yanks you into the next cameo scene where another point is to be made. A story with great potential for adventure and tragic downfall (of the arrogant lieutenant) is wasted. The movie is too artful to be campy.
There are some nice landscape shots, suggesting epic sweep. Glynnis Johns, Leslie Howard, and Raymond Massey leap out at you when they appear.
It would not have been hard to cast the Nazis in an unfavorable light by showing something true and important about them, but the bad behavior the movie portrays - kicking an Eskimo, spouting propaganda at inopportune times, smashing a Picasso painting improbably kept in a teepee, acting the ungrateful guest - seem contrived and trivial compared with the real reasons for going to war. The trouble with propaganda is that it wants to tell lies.
It was a bold stroke to put the Germans on an epic trek through Canada, but every time you start to empathize with the adventurers, the movie slaps your hand, delivers a sermon, and yanks you into the next cameo scene where another point is to be made. A story with great potential for adventure and tragic downfall (of the arrogant lieutenant) is wasted. The movie is too artful to be campy.
There are some nice landscape shots, suggesting epic sweep. Glynnis Johns, Leslie Howard, and Raymond Massey leap out at you when they appear.
It would not have been hard to cast the Nazis in an unfavorable light by showing something true and important about them, but the bad behavior the movie portrays - kicking an Eskimo, spouting propaganda at inopportune times, smashing a Picasso painting improbably kept in a teepee, acting the ungrateful guest - seem contrived and trivial compared with the real reasons for going to war. The trouble with propaganda is that it wants to tell lies.