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.

Plot

Mr. Powers, editor of the New York Globe is concerned about the situation in Nazi Germany and the growing power of Adolf Hitler. After searching for a tough crime reporter to bring a good story home, he appoints Johnny Jones (McCrea) as a foreign correspondent for the Globe, to operate under the pen name "Huntley Haverstock".

Jones/Haverstock's first assignment is to travel to Europe to speak to Stephen Fisher (Marshall), leader of the Universal Peace Party. He is to go to a party held by Fisher in honor of a man named Van Meer (Bassermann). En route to the party, Jones/Haverstock sees Van Meer entering the car which is to take him to the party. Jones runs to interview him and is invited to ride along with Van Meer to the party. At the party, Jones meets Stephen Fisher's daughter, Carol (Day), and Van Meer disappears mysteriously. Some time later, Fisher informs all the guests that Van Meer (who was supposed to be the guest of honor), will not be attending the party; instead he will appear at a political conference in Amsterdam.

During that conference, Van Meer is shot in front of a large crowd, by a man disguised as a photographer. Jones commandeers a car to follow the assassin's getaway car. The car he jumps into happens to also contain Carol and another man, Scott ffolliott (Sanders), who explains that the capital letter in his surname was dropped in memory of an executed ancestor. The group follows the assassin's car to a windmill in the countryside. Jones searches the windmill and finds a number of people (including the assassin) in it. Struggling to keep his presence in the mill unknown, Jones hides in a dark room, where he discovers the real Van Meer, still alive (the one he saw killed was an impostor). However, the real Van Meer is being drugged by the enemy to "preserve him" and is unable to tell Jones anything. Jones, now being chased, flees the windmill. 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's hotel room to kidnap him. Not realizing that these are kidnappers, not real police officers, Jones tries to use his phone to cancel his dinner date. When he is unable to get a call 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, and once in the bathroom, he escapes out the window and enters Carol Fisher's hotel room, located near his. The two call to the service desk and request that several hotel servants come to Jones's hotel room. Jones then calls the police from Carol's telephone. The hotel servants arrive at Jones's room to find the "police officers" still there; a battle ensues. While the fight is going on, Jones orders a man to get him clothing.

Escaping the hotel, Jones and Carol escape onto a British boat heading back to England. While a furious storm thunders through the ocean, Jones proposes to Carol. In England, the two go to Carol's father. At his house is a man whom Jones recognizes as one of the men he saw at the windmill in Amsterdam. Jones tells Fisher this, but Fisher ignores it, saying that he will send a bodyguard to guard Jones. Jones narrowly escapes being killed by a truck after being pushed out on to the road by the bodyguard (Gwenn), who is actually an assassin. The bodyguard/assassin then 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 death instead. After this, Jones and ffolliott are convinced that Fisher is a traitor who is covering up for spies and war criminals. The two come up with a plan, with Jones going off with Carol to the countryside, while ffolliott will pretend she has been kidnapped to force Fisher's hand and divulge to him Van Meer's location. However, when Jones and Carol reach the inn, they have an argument about the rooms, resulting in Carol returning to London. Just as Fisher is about to fall for ffolliott's bluff and reveal the whereabouts of Van Meer, he hears Carol's car pull up in the drive, and writes that on the piece of paper he hands to ffollitt, instead of the location.

ffoliot leaves with the paper only to find out that it is useless. By following Fisher, he finds out that Van Meer is being held at a hotel that is covering up for Fisher and his organization. Just as Van Meer is being made to divulge the important information the organization needs, ffolliott distracts the interrogators. 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 the group are on a Short Empire "Clipper" plane to America, Fisher confesses his deeds to his daughter. Despite this, Carol blames Jones for not really loving her and only wanting to pursue her father. Jones protests that he was just doing his job as a reporter but Carol refuses to listen. 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 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 aboard the American ship. Jones makes a call to his editor, Mr. Powers, in New York. As he is talking on the phone, the captain tells Jones and ffolliott that they are not allowed to report anything to their newspapers. Jones puts the phone down but leaves the line open, and Mr. Powers secretly listens as Jones tells his story. 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.

In the film's 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!

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.

• Hitchcock originally wanted Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck to play McCrea and Day's parts.

• 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:

• 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.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Foreign Correspondent (film)

• Foreign Correspondent at the Internet Movie Database
• Foreign Correspondent at the TCM Movie Database
• Foreign Correspondent at the Hitchcock Wiki