“Prompted by the Ministry of Information (as part of the propaganda campaign to bring the United States into the war) and largely shot on location, 49th Parallel follows the misadventures of a group of German seamen stranded in Canada when their U-boat is sunk in Hudson's Bay. Picaresque encounters with a cross-section of Canadians provoke a running debate between Nazism and ‘democracy' which, thanks to Pressburger's script, is far from cut and dried.” -British Film Institute.

“Charles Oakley reports that the film ‘brought out the resource and courage of the Nazi commander so powerfully... many feared that the picture had unintentionally become better propaganda for the enemy than for ourselves.'”