Northern Pursuit (1943)

. . . which is the main reason why Germany kept losing World Wars. During WWI they tried to win by digging a trench from Berlin to Buckingham Palace, not realizing that the English Channel was serving as a castle moat. Then, as NORTHERN PURSUIT documents, for WWII they thought they could assemble and fly a secret stash of airplane parts from the Yukon to destroy the strategic shipping locks at Sault St. Marie. In the unlikely event that such a bomber actually could be put together from an Erector Set in the Arctic of the Far North, it could NOT have reached even the halfway point to the Locks connecting Canada to Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Likewise, since the Nazis had burned all the history and geography books within their realm in the 1930s, they had no understanding of the vast distance from Berlin to Central Russia, and no way of knowing what a disaster Napoleon's Russian Campaign had been a century earlier. In NORTHERN PURSUIT, Errol Flynn plays a Keystone Mountie bumbler who keeps getting the other Mounties killed (including the Best Man for his upcoming wedding). Fortunately for the Allied Cause, the Nazis of this episode were even more bumbling.

Flynn is a corporal in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. They used to dress every day in colorful red jackets. Now they're known as the RCMP and dress like the Highway Patrol. It is a great loss.Flynn is more or less kidnapped by German pilot Helmut Dantine and his three Nazi companions and forced to lead them across the wilderness of northern Manitoba, where a bomber is stashed. The plan is to bomb the locks of the St. Lawrence River or to mar the splendor of Niagara Falls and disappoint all the honeymooners or something. It's not made very clear.These Nazis are really bad boys, especially the stern and handsome Helmut Dantine. They kidnap a couple of women to take along as hostages. They kill anyone who gets in their way, as well as anyone they meet who is of no use to the Nazi cause. And if one of their own people is disabled, he can kiss his life good-bye. That's the kind of rats they are.Flynn is handsome as usual, this being 1943. He'd not gotten along at all well with his previous director, Michael Curtiz, and by this time he was being directed by the Irish-American Raoul Walsh, whose work had as much zip but who was more tolerant of Flynn's boozing. The two had an agreement that Flynn wouldn't start drinking until 5 in the afternoon.There's a supposedly comic introduction and close, involving Julie Bishop as the daughter of a cheapskate Scottish shop keeper at a trading post. At the very end, when Flynn and Bishop are finally married, he embraces her at the party. She asks, "How many women have you loved before me?". Flynn replies, "None, darling," then turns his face towards the camera, rolls his eyes, and mutters, "What am I saying?" Some joke. He'd recently been in court on charges of statutory rape brought against him by two teen-aged cutie pies who testified that he'd seduced them aboard his yacht and had made love while wearing his socks. Some wag suggested that the movie Flynn had just completed, "Gentleman Jim," should have its name changed to just "Jim." A couple of outdoor shots were done at Sun Valley, Idaho, including an exciting ski chase. Most of the film was shot at the Warners' Studios. Yet, the settings are reasonably convincing, except that nobody's breath steams and all the clothing is so immaculate and clean, even Helmut Dantine's white turtle neck, which he never seems to change. A kind of minor narrative thread alludes to the Canadians' treatment of Indians, which here generates a resentment soon dissipated when they see what the Nazis are like. Actually, Canadian Indians, probably Algonkin-speaking Woods Cree in this case, were treated fairly well, at least compared to American Indians.Even with all the suspense, this isn't a very fast-paced movie, and either I was asleep when Flynn and his superiors worked out the plan to discover what the Nazis were up to, or else the editor should be tied to an evergreen tree trunk and left to be eaten alive by ravenous timber wolves, or maybe -- this could get to be fun -- maybe he could be impaled repeatedly by an enraged moose.

I was a bit surprised by this film. Despite being a quality production from Warner Brothers with a top director and a top star, the film was seemingly written by chipmunks--and dumb ones at that. Perhaps the reason they filmed such a bad plot is because it was WWII and they wanted a good propaganda piece for the audiences--but still, it should have been a lot better. Instead of bolstering the war effort, this film probably just elicited a few laughs.Why did I dislike the script so much? Well, the biggest problem is how ludicrous the plot was. Sometimes you need to suspend disbelief to enjoy a film--here you need to turn off you brain completely! You are expected to believe that the Germans would send soldiers all the way to the most inhospitable wasteland of Canada. Then, you need to accept that they plan to bomb the St. Lawrence Seaway---and had planted planes in the wild years before the war in order to do this!! And, the Germans who concocted such a complicated plot had to be dumb enough to have this ridiculous plot foiled by a double-agent (Flynn). Now this is not the only obvious problem with the script. It also is, from time to time, a bit dull and could have either used a trimming or some more excitement along the journey. Much of it simply shows the group slogging through the snow in the sound stage--and a little of this goes a long way.It's really a shame about the script, as the acting was quite good. Even though Errol Flynn had little to do in most of the movie, as usual his performance appears effortless as he was a very good actor. Gene Lockhart plays a heartless and spineless guy very well. And, relatively unknown Helmut Dantine is fine as a cold and snarling Nazi. These actors simply deserved better and the main reason I still give a reasonably high score was their acting--and it must have been hard giving good performances when they knew the script was a turkey.

I can understand the purpose of propaganda movies during WWII. It would be good if they were at least accurately presented! Errol Flynn portrays an undercover RCMP Corporal in pursuit of a Nazi pilot ultimately intent on bombing the St. Lawrence Seaway.This movie is set in "the frozen north" of Canada. We find out, eventually, that the setting is near The Pas, Manitoba in August of 1943 (a prisoner release document reveals this fact). If we are to buy into the story to start with, maybe we should deal with the credibility of the setting! The Pas is in the upper plains of Manitoba near the Saskatchewan border. So why do we see mushing huskies traversing mountainous terrain? There are no mountains within a thousand miles of The Pas and in August, the climate would be very summer-like. I'm sure Canadians who viewed the movie originally would have been quite amused! Throw in a paper thin plot, a laughable romantic red herring and you have a pretty awful movie. If the idea was to induce movie-goers to buy war bonds, I doubt if a nickle was collected based on this bummer!