Foreign Correspondent
Also see Foreign Correspondent (TV series).Foreign Correspondent is a
1940 film which tells the story of an American reporter who becomes involved in espionage in
England during the onset of
World War II. It stars
Joel McCrea,
George Sanders,
Laraine Day,
Herbert Marshall,
Albert Bassermann and
Robert Benchley.
The film had a large number of writers:
Robert Benchley,
Charles Bennett,
Harold Clurman,
Joan Harrison,
Ben Hecht,
James Hilton,
John Howard Lawson,
John Lee Mahin,
Richard Maibaum and
Budd Schulberg. It was directed by
Alfred Hitchcock.
The film was one of two Alfred Hitchcock films nominated for the
Academy Award for Best Picture in the
1941 Academy Awards. The other film was
Rebecca, which went on to win the award. Bassermann was nominated for the
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
The movie is memorable for such visuals as a flat field of
windmills in which the sails of one windmill are mysteriously turning in the opposite direction from the others, or the dramatic shooting of a diplomat's decoy on the crowded steps of a public building, after which the assassin dashes through a crowd of onlookers, as from above Hitchcock's camera follows his progress by showing a line of disturbed and jostled
umbrellas in an otherwise unbroken sea of bumbershoots.
Jones (McCrea) is appointed as the Foreign Correspondent for the New York Globe. He is sent to
London to meet Van Meer, a
Dutch minister who is playing a crucial part in maintaining peace in
Europe. Jones follows Van Meer to
Amsterdam, where the latter is seemingly killed in front of a large crowd. Jones follows the assassin's getaway car to a windmill in the countryside, where he discovers that a large network of spies are trying to hasten the outbreak of war in Europe, under the guise of a
Pacifism movement.
McCrea escapes death several times during the film:
*Two spies, dressed as police officers, arrive at his hotel room, intent on kidnapping him. He asks if he can take a bath in his hotel bathroom, which they permit. He escapes out the window and enters Laraine Day's bedroom, from where he phones for several hotel servants to go to his hotel room simultaneously.
*He narrowly escapes being killed by a truck after being pushed out on to the road by an assassin posing as a bodyguard (
Edmund Gwenn).
*The same bodyguard/assassin attempts to push him off the ledge of a cathedral tower, but McCrea steps aside just in time, and the 'bodyguard' plunges to his death instead.
* His transatlantic plane is shot down by
Nazis in the thrilling climax.
Johnny Jones is speaking on
BBC Radio when a bomb raid commences. Everyone but Johnny and Carol (Day) flee to the bomb shelter. Johnny carries on speaking.
Carol: They're listening in America.:
Johnny: Okay, we'll tell 'em then. I can't read the rest of the speech I had, 'cause the lights have gone out, so I'll just have to speak from the cuff. All that noise you hear isn't static - it's death, coming to London. Yes, they're coming here now. You can hear the bombs falling on the streets and on the homes. Don't tune me out, hang on a while - this is a big story, and you're part of it, it's too late to do anything here now except stand in the dark and let them come... as if the lights were out everywhere, except in America. Keep those lights burning, cover them with steel, ring them with guns, build a canopy of battleships and bombing planes around them. Hello, America, hang on to your lights: they're the only ones left in the world!
*
Hitchcock's cameo: When Jones (McCrea) first spots Van Meer (Basserman) on the street in London, Hitchcock walks past reading a newspaper.
*Hitchcock originally wanted
Gary Cooper and
Barbara Stanwyck to play McCrea and Day's parts
*Basserman couldn't speak
English (he was
German), and had to learn all his lines phonetically. Likewise, one 'Dutch' girl speaks Dutch phonetically, though not quite as convincingly.
*In the windmill scene, the windmills are more Spanish than Dutch in appearance, and the Dutch policeman speaks (broken) German in stead of Dutch.
* When McCrea flees his hotel room and touches the letter 'E' of the neon 'HOTEL' sign, he burns himself and the letters 'E' and 'L' die, appropriately leaving the word 'HOT'.
*Nazi Propaganda Minister
Goebbels called
Foreign Correspondent::
*
Classic Movies: Foreign Correspondent (1940)*
An analysis of Foreign Correspondent in the context of Hitchcock's career
