49th Parallel

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.

When the train is going over the railroad bridge at Niagara Falls ostensibly traveling from Canada to the U.S., it actually is heading from the U.S. into Canada. The water in the Niagara River under the bridge in the scene is coming toward the camera, with the train moving across the bridge from left to right. Canada would be on the right in the shot, the direction the so-called U.S. bound train is traveling.

(Spoken introduction) "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 by a handshake and kept ever since. A boundary which divides two nations yet marks their friendly meeting grounds, the 49th parallel, the longest undefended frontier in the world."

The initial American release had many cuts made to avoid upsetting some special interest groups. the running time was cut from 123 minutes to 104 minutes. Most of the submarine's voyage up to Hudson Bay was removed. They dive after sinking the freighter (and filming her crew) and we next see them in the Bay, preparing to send the raiding party ashore. All the scenes of them entering the Bay, including the reference to "his charts" (the missionary's), were cut. They cut all references to the "flying missionary" who was a German spy, the scenes with the map and all of it. They also cut the other "delicate" passage there, where Hirth tells the captive Canadians that the Eskimos are sub-apes like Negroes, only one step above the Jews, and the ripostes from Johnnie and the Factor. Obviously they didn't want to offend southern segregationists or anti-Semites by showing that Nazis shared their racist views, or leave in any dialogue decrying same.

Featured in Has Anybody Here Seen Canada? A History of Canadian Movies 1939-1953 (1979)