On episode 141 of the Director Watch Podcast, co-hosts Ryan McQuade and Jay Ledbetter discuss the first film in their Powell and Pressburger series, 49th Parallel aka The Invaders (1942).
Welcome back to Director Watch! On this AwardsWatch podcast, the boys attempt to break down, analyze, and ultimately, get inside the mind of some of cinema’s greatest auteurs. In doing so, they will look at their filmographies, explore what drives them artistically and what makes their decision making process so fascinating. Add in a few silly tangents and a fun game at the end of the episode and you’ve got yourself a podcast we truly hope you love.
Known as the most influential director duo of all time, and the greatest British filmmakers not named Hitchcock, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger were a powerhouse team in their era, creating some of the richest films of their time that have aged impeccably. But you don’t have to tell the Director Watch hosts this because they’ve covered these filmmakers before on a previous series, on their old show. That was during the pandemic, and now they have had time to settle on their motion pictures, and seen them multiple times, and thought it would be a wonderful chance to go back and review these films under a now familiar lens. In the first entry into their series, they take a look at their 1941 war picture (released in 1942 in the U.S.), where the duo subverts the expectations of the audience, and force us to examine a group of “protagonists” that were rather unconventional at the time; a group of Nazis on the run, attempting to cross into the then-neutral United States. Ryan and Jay breakdown their thoughts on the film, their vast respect for Powell and Pressburger, their use of the Germans as the main characters, the propaganda within films during the war, and the amazing talents of Leslie Howard, Laurence Olivier, Anton Walbrook; the latter who will be mentioned much more throughout this series.
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This podcast runs 1h54m. The guys will be back next week to begin their series on the films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger with a review of their next film, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. You can rent it via iTunes and Amazon Prime rental in preparation for the next episode of Director Watch. Till then, let’s get into it.
Music: MUSICALIFE, from Pond5 (intro) and “B-3” from BoxCat Games Nameless: The Hackers RPG Soundtrack (outro).
