Foreign Correspondent (film)


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Foreign Correspondent

original film poster
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Written by Charles Bennett
Joan Harrison
Starring Joel McCrea
Laraine Day
Herbert Marshall
George Sanders
Albert Basserman and Robert Benchley
Editing by Dorothy Spencer
Release date(s) August 16, 1940 (U.S. release)
United Artists
Running time 120 min.
Language English/Dutch/Latvian
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

Foreign Correspondent (1940) is an Academy Award-nominated thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock which tells the story of an American reporter who tries to expose enemy spies in England, a series of events involving a continent-wide conspiracy that eventually leads to the events of a fictionalized Second World War. It stars Joel McCrea, George Sanders, Laraine Day, Herbert Marshall, Albert Bassermann, Edmund Gwenn, and Robert Benchley.

The film had an unusually 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, with Bennett, Benchley, Harrison, and Hilton the only writers credited in the finished film. It was based on Vincent Sheean's political memoir Personal History (New York: Doubleday, 1935), the rights to which were purchased by producer Walter Wanger for $10,000 in 1935.

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 film was nominated for a total of six Academy Awards. It did not win any.

The movie is memorable for such visual effects 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, and, the film's climax where the plane that the main characters are traveling on-board is shot down by a German U-Boat.

Contents

Plot

A Mr. Powers, editor of the New York Globe is concerned about the situation in Nazi Germany and the growing power of Adolf Hitler. He is searching for a tough crime reporter to bring a good story home. Johnny Jones (McCrea) is appointed as a foreign correspondent for the Globe by Powers, who gives Jones the pen name "Huntley Haverstock". Stephen Fisher (Marshall), leader of the Universal Peace Party is going to meet him in London. Jones says 'goodbye' to his relatives and boards to the ocean liner, Queen Mary, to London, England. While in London, Jones/Haverstock sees Van Meer (Bassermann) entering a car which is to take him to the party. Jones runs to interview him when Van Meer talks him in to riding with him. When they arrive at the party, Van Meer disappears mysteriously. At the same party some time later Jones meets Fisher's daughter Carol (Day). Some time later, Fisher informs all the guests that Van Meer (who was supposed to be the guest of honor), was not going to attend the party but was going to be seen at a political conference in Amsterdam. In Amsterdam, Van Meer is violently shot through the head in front of a large crowd, by a man disguised as a photographer. Jones follows the assassin's getaway car and hops into a car yelling, 'follow that car,' seeing Carol again in the car with another man, Scott ffolliott (Sanders) who explains that no capital letter at the beginning of the surname because one of his ancestors had his head cut of by Henry VIII of England, the capital was dropped in memory of the event. They follow the assassin's car to a windmill in the countryside. He searches throughout the windmill and finds people in the mill (including the assassin.) After, a thrilling struggle to keep his presence in the mill a secret, Jones hides in a dark room where he discovers that the real Van Meer is still alive (the one killed was an impostor). However, he is being drugged by the enemy to preserve him. Van Meer manages to tell Jones nothing. Jones escapes in a thrilling windmill chase scene. As he flees the scene he finds the assassin's getaway car. He calls the police but when they arrive the vehicle is gone, and the kidnappers have escaped with Van Meer in an airplane.

Some time later two spies dressed as policemen arrive at Jones' hotel room to kidnap him. Not knowing that these fake police officers are kidnappers, Jones tries to use his phone to (supposedly) cancel his dinner date. Unable to get through, he realizes that his phone line has been cut, and he now suspects that the "policemen" are in fact spies. He coolly asks if he can take a bath in his hotel bathroom, which the spies permit. He escapes out the window and enters Carol Fisher's bedroom, which was coincidentally just close to his room. The two phone for several hotel servants to go to his hotel room simultaneously. He calls the police from Carol's telephone. This results in conflict between the servants police officers. While all the fight is going on, Jones orders a man to get him a shirt, tie, hat etc. From there they escape onto a British boat sailing back to England. While a furious storm thunders through the ocean Jones proposes to Carol, to marry him. In England, the two go to Carol's father. At his house is a man, whom Jones realizes is one of the men he saw at the windmill in Amsterdam. Jones tells this to Fisher who ignores it, but says that he will send a bodyguard to guard Jones for his own safety. He narrowly escapes being killed by a truck after being pushed out on to the road by the assassin posing as the bodyguard (Gwenn). The bodyguard/assassin attempts to push him off the ledge of the Westminster Cathedral tower, but Jones steps aside just in time, and the 'bodyguard' plunges to his own timely demise instead. After this he and ffolliott are convinced that Fisher is a traitor who is covering up spies and war criminals. ffolliott, focusing more on Van Meer, claims to Fisher that he kidnapped Carol and that he won't let her go unless he told him where Van Meer was. Fisher naturally refuses to tell him since he hears over the telephone that his daughter is alive and well. He gives ffoliot a note that reads:

Sorry, but I heard my daughter was coming...

ffoliot is enraged by Fisher's refusal he leaves him and his daughter. He then finds out that Van Meer is being held at a hotel that is covering up for Fisher and his organization. After Jones arrives at the scene Fisher and his bodyguards escape the hotel room and leave Van Meer behind. Van Meer is rushed to the hospital in a coma.

While all this is going on, England and France declare war on Germany. Then, while on a Short Empire "Clipper" to America, Fisher confesses to his daughter. Nevertheless, Carol blames Jones for not really loving her and only wanting to pursue her father. Jones protests that he's just doing his job as a reporter but Carol refuses to listen. But just seconds later, the plane is shelled by a German U-Boat, and ultimately crashes in the middle of the ocean. The plane sinks and many trapped passengers drown. Survivors escape onto the floating wing of the downed plane; realizing that it cannot support all the survivors, including his daughter, Stephen Fisher commits suicide by drowning himself. Jones and ffolliott heroically attempt to rescue Fisher, but they are unsuccessful and are forced to return to the floating wing. The Captain of the plane sees an American Battleship approaching and the group is saved from the wing.

Later, Carol, Jones and ffolliott are taken onboard the American ship. Jones makes a call to his editor Mr. Powers in New York. As he is talking on the phone ffolliott tells Jones that he is not allowed to report anything to his newspaper. As the commander of the ship storms into the room Jones says "Mr. Powers, don't hang up and keep your ear pinned to the phone," meaning that Jones leaves the line open and Mr. Powers listens on the other end as Jones tells his story. The plan works, Powers pens the story down and rushes it to the printing room after Carol proves the veracity of the story by identifying herself as Fisher's daughter identifying Fisher as the traitor and letting the world know the truth.

And in the film's grand finale Jones is making a radio broadcast over a BBC radio, Carol sitting by his side, as the eve of World War II rises. Everyone hides in the shelters to escape the German bomb raids but Jones and Carol are standing alone in the dark broadcasting room. He makes a patriotic speech over the broadcast "because [he] knows they're listening in America":

Carol: They're listening in America.
Jones: 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, and its 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 now, 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 to stand in the dark and let them come... as if the lights were all out everywhere, except in America. But 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 lights left in the world!

The screen fades out in this epic finale.

Response

The movie was nominated for six Academy Awards. It has a 96% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Trivia

 Lists of miscellaneous information should be avoided. Please relocate any relevant information into appropriate sections or articles. (June 2008)
  • Alfred Hitchcock cameo: When Jones (McCrea) first spots Van Meer (Basserman) on the street in London, Hitchcock walks past reading a newspaper.
  • Producer Walter Wanger bought the rights to Vincent Sheean's non-fiction book Personal History in 1935, but it took 14 writers and five years before Wanger had a script he was satisfied with. By that time, Hitchcock was in the U.S. under contract with David O. Selznick and available to direct this film on a loan out from Selznick.
  • 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 instead of Dutch.
  • There is an unmistakable image of Adolf Hitler in the windmill scene. Right after Jones (McCrea) rescues his coat from the grinding gears, and escapes out the window, he peers back in at the spies. In the right hand corner of the scene, there is a cartoon like image of Adolf Hitler formed by a wood beam and unidentified markings. Hitchcock's subtle, almost subliminal reminder of who the bad guys really represent.
  • 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' and leaving the hotel's name as 'HOT EUROPE', underscoring the film's theme of war in Europe.
  • Hitchcock's eccentric marriage proposal to his wife was scripted for this film. In this case, Johnny was proposing to Carol.
  • In the crash scene, when the water is filling the plane and some of the trapped, frantic passengers are about to drown, you can see one of the actors pop his head through the artificial ceiling.
  • Nazi Propaganda Minister Goebbels called Foreign Correspondent:
“ A masterpiece of propaganda, a first-class production which no doubt will make a certain impression upon the broad masses of the people in enemy countries ”
  • In one of the last scenes McCrea is making a telephone call from an American ship on the Atlantic to Mr Powers from the New York Globe. At that time it was very unusual to make a phone call from a ship to a land line. It still is.
  • The film, which ends with Germany bombing London, opened at the dawn of the Battle of Britain. It opened just three weeks before Germany actually began bombing London, and three days after the Luftwaffe began bombing British coastal airfields in the early Adlerangriff phase of the battle.

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