Movies like 49th Parallel
The best movies like 49th Parallel (1941) are Desperate Journey (1942), Went the Day Well? (1942) and The Train (1964). If 49th Parallel hooked you with its war and thriller, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedThe Great Escape (1963)7.9/10 from 2,996 votes
- NewestThe Sea Wolves (1980)Released 1980
Desperate Journey (1942)
A British bomber crew, including Australian and American, is shot down over Germany during a bombing run. The five make their way across a perilous Germany, intent on reaching the UK with the war secrets they have learned, battling Nazis along the way.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both war
Went the Day Well? (1942)
The quiet village of Bramley End is taken over by German troops posing as Royal Engineers. Their task is to disrupt England's radar network in preparation for a full scale German invasion. Once the villagers discover the true identity of the troops, they do whatever they can to thwart the Nazis plans.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both war & thriller
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Train (1964)
As the Allied forces approach Paris in August 1944, German Colonel Von Waldheim is desperate to take all of France's greatest paintings to Germany. He manages to secure a train to transport the valuable art works even as the chaos of retreat descends upon them. The French resistance however wants to stop them from stealing their national treasures but have received orders from London that they are not to be destroyed. The station master, Labiche, is tasked with scheduling the train and making it all happen smoothly but he is also part of a dwindling group of resistance fighters tasked with preventing the theft. He and others stage an elaborate ruse to keep the train from ever leaving French territory.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both war & thriller
Worth the HypeMovies like this"Pimpernel" Smith (1941)
Eccentric Cambridge archaeologist Horatio Smith takes a group of British and American archaeology students to pre-war Nazi Germany to help in his excavations. His research is supported by the Nazis, since he professes to be looking for evidence of the Aryan origins of German civilisation. However, he has a secret agenda: to free inmates of the concentration camps.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both thriller
Contraband (1940)
During early World War II, a Danish sea captain, delayed in a British port, tangles with German spies.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both thriller & war
Edge of Darkness (1943)
The film pivots around the local Norwegian doctor and his family. The doctor's wife (Ruth Gordon) wants to hold on to the pretence of gracious living and ignore their German occupiers. The doctor, Martin Stensgard (Walter Huston), would also prefer to stay neutral, but is torn. His brother-in-law, the wealthy owner of the local fish cannery, collaborates with the Nazis. The doctor's daughter, Karen (Ann Sheridan), is involved with the resistance and with its leader Gunnar Brogge (Errol Flynn). The doctor's son has just returned to town, having been sent down from the university, and is soon influenced by his Nazi-sympathizer uncle. Captain Koenig (Helmut Dantine), the young German commandant of the occupying garrison, whose fanatic determination to do everything by the book and spoutings about the invincibility of the Reich hides a growing fear of a local uprising.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWhere Eagles Dare (1968)
World War II is raging, and an American general has been captured and is being held hostage in the Schloss Adler, a Bavarian castle that's nearly impossible to breach. It's up to a group of skilled Allied soldiers to liberate the general before it's too late.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both war
Worth the HypeMovies like thisVon Ryan's Express (1965)
Von Ryan's Express stars Frank Sinatra as a POW colonel who leads a daring escape from WWII Italy by taking over a freight train, but he has to win over the British soldiers he finds himself commanding.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both war & thriller
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Sea Wolves (1980)
A German spy is passing on information about the location of Allied ships in the neutral harbor of Goa, India, with catastrophic results. Unable to undertake a full military operation in the Portuguese stronghold, English intelligence brings out of retirement a crew of geriatric ex-soldiers, veterans from World War I, using their age as cover. These old soldiers are asked to take to the seas and pull off an unlikely undercover mission.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both war & thriller
SnoozefestMovies like thisUncertain Glory (1944)
In occupied France, a convicted thief and murderer escapes the guillotine when a bombing raid strikes the prison, but is quickly re-captured by the inspector of the Surete responsible for his original arrest. Fearing the guillotine more than his actual death, the convict inveigles the inspector to help him with a plan to rescue 100 Frenchmen taken by the Gestapo following an act of sabotage: he will confess to being the saboteur and allow himself to be executed by firing squad, the Gestapo's method of execution, thus freeing the 100 men.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both war & thriller
Reunion in France (1942)
Frenchwoman Michele de la Becque, an opponent of the Nazis in German-occupied Paris, hides a downed American flyer, Pat Talbot, and attempts to get him safely out of the country.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both war
The Cow and I (1959)
In 1942, a French prisonner of war in Germany decide to escape to France using a cow hold by a lunge as a decoy. He cross all Germany in this way.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Eagle Has Landed (1976)
When the Nazi high command learns in late 1943 that Winston Churchill will be spending time at a country estate in Norfolk, it hatches an audacious scheme to kidnap the prime minister and spirit him to Germany for enforced negotiations with Hitler.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both thriller & war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTwelve O'Clock High (1949)
In the early days of daylight bombing raids over Germany, General Frank Savage must take command of a 'hard luck' bomber group. Much of the story deals with his struggle to whip his group into a disciplined fighting unit in spite of heavy losses, and withering attacks by German fighters over their targets.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both war
Worth the HypeMovies like thisNorthern Pursuit (1943)
Canadian Mountie Steve Wagner captures a German Luftwaffe officer on a spy mission, who later escapes from the prison camp. To catch the spy ring, the Mounties employ a ruse so that the spies, believing Steve to be sympathetic, enlist him in their plans.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both war
Five Graves to Cairo (1943)
During the 1942 North African campaign, a British straggler passes as a waiter at the hotel commandeered as Erwin Rommel's headquarters. He has thoughts of assassinating Rommel but his cover may provide an even better use.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both war & thriller
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Great Escape (1963)
The Nazis, exasperated at the number of escapes from their prison camps by a relatively small number of Allied prisoners, relocate them to a high-security 'escape-proof' camp to sit out the remainder of the war. Undaunted, the prisoners plan one of the most ambitious escape attempts of World War II. Based on a true story.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both war
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisMan Hunt (1941)
Shortly before the start of WW2, renowned British big-game hunter Alan Thorndike, vacationing in Bavaria, has Hitler in his gun sight. He is captured, beaten, left for dead, and escapes back to London where he is hounded by Nazi agents and aided by a young woman.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both thriller & war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Guns of Navarone (1961)
A team of allied saboteurs are assigned an impossible mission: infiltrate an impregnable Nazi-held island and destroy the two enormous long-range field guns that prevent the rescue of 2,000 trapped British soldiers.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both war
Worth the HypeMovies like thisDays of Glory (1944)
A heroic guerilla group fights back against impossible odds during the 1941 Nazi invasion of Russia.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both war
The Cockleshell Heroes (1955)
During WW2, German ships are "safely" docked upriver at Bordeaux, but the British send a team of kayakers to attack them.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both war
Hangmen Also Die! (1943)
During the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, surgeon Dr. Franticek Svoboda, a Czech patriot, assassinates the brutal "Hangman of Europe", Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich, and is wounded in the process. In his attempt to escape, he is helped by history professor Stephen Novotny and his daughter Mascha.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both thriller & war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Angry Hills (1959)
In 1941 Greece, on the eve of German occupation, cynical American foreign correspondent Michael Morrison arrives in Athens, intending to depart for London the following day. While there he is tricked into smuggling a list of resistance leaders out of the country and is pursued by the Germans.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both war & thriller
The Man Who Never Was (1956)
The true story of a British effort to trick the Germans into weakening Sicily's defenses before the 1943 attack. A dead soldier is dressed as a British officer and outfitted with faked papers showing that the Allies were intending to invade occupied Greece. His body is put into the sea where it will ultimately drift ashore and the papers be passed along to German Intelligence.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both thriller & war
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Counterfeit Traitor (1962)
Blacklisted in modern day WW2, a Swedish oil trader opts to assist British Allies, by means of infiltrating and surveying Nazi Germany.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both war & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Sea Chase (1955)
As the Second World War breaks out, German freighter captain Karl Ehrlich is about to leave Sydney, Australia with his vessel, the Ergenstrasse. Ehrlich, an anti-Nazi but proud German, hopes to outrun or out-maneuver the British warship pursuing him. Aboard his vessel is Elsa Keller, a woman Ehrlich has been ordered to return to Germany safely along with whatever secrets she carries. When Ehrlich's fiercely Nazi chief officer Kirchner commits an atrocity, the British pursuit becomes deadly.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAll Through the Night (1942)
Broadway gamblers stumble across a plan by Nazi saboteurs to blow up an American battleship.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisOperation Crossbow (1965)
Allied agents infiltrate the Nazi rocket complex at Peenemunde in order to obtain their secrets and sabotage the plant. The film alternates between German developments of the V-1 missile and V-2 rocket (with a German cast speaking their own language) and discovery by British Intelligence of the weapon.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both war & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPassage to Marseille (1944)
A freedom-loving French journalist sacrifices his happiness and security to battle Nazi tyranny.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisEscape to Athena (1979)
During the World War II, the prisoners of a German camp in a Greek island are trying to escape. They not only want their freedom, but also seek an ineffable treasure hidden in a monastery at the summit of the island's mountain.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both war
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like 49th Parallel?
The closest matches to 49th Parallel are Desperate Journey (1942), Went the Day Well? (1942) and The Train (1964). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after 49th Parallel?
People who watched 49th Parallel most often go on to Desperate Journey (1942), Went the Day Well? (1942) and The Train (1964).
What is the highest-rated movie like 49th Parallel?
The Great Escape (1963), rated 7.9/10 by 2,996 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like 49th Parallel?
The Sea Wolves (1980) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like 49th Parallel?
Yes: Desperate Journey (1942), Went the Day Well? (1942) and The Train (1964).
How are movies similar to 49th Parallel chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside 49th Parallel, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.