Northern Pursuit (1943)
(On Cable TV, April 2022) Even though Canadian audiences are among the closest to the American ones (long-standing proof being that the “American” box-office totals are really the sum of the American and Canadian grosses), there’s a long and rarely glorious history of Hollywood romanticizing Canadian history and landscapes in ways that feel hilarious north of the border. Northern Pursuit, in a vein very similar to the near-contemporary British film 49th Parallel, uses WW2 anxieties to propose a Nazi spy running across Canada toward a dastardly plan, and a brave Canadian Mountie tracking him. Considering that none other than Errol Flynn plays the heroic Mountie, few will be fooled by a momentary suggestion that he had joined the Nazis – and even fewer will be surprised that the film devolves into heroic antics. It’s a revealing look at how Hollywood exoticized even a near-neighbour, and a sometimes-wild demonstration of the limitations of movies shot on studio backlots. No Canadian with experience dealing with snow, for instance, will be convinced by the obviously fake winter scenes shot indoors: there are a few outdoors sequences, but not enough to distract from, well, the distracting rest. (The film’s production history notes that nothing was shot in Canada – at best, Idaho doubles for the outdoor sequences.) Northern Pursuit is far funnier and sillier than anything else – especially as a propaganda film meant to bolster morale at home. At least it’s not as astonishingly stupid as the 1934 version of Rose Marie.