Foreign Correspondent (1940) is one of Alfred Hitchcock’s openly anti-Nazi films, along with Saboteur, Notorious and Lifeboat. Most of his films are not political at all. This excellent screenplay rises above mere wartime propaganda, in spite of the blatant propaganda statement that producer Walter Wanger tacked onto the end of it. That message was for Americans to wake up and save Europe from Nazi domination.

The Story

Joel McCrea, a heartthrob in his time, plays Johnny Jones, a naive young reporter who is sent to Europe to replace the foreign correspondent who is always getting too drunk to do his job. Robert Benchley, who is best known as a humorist and author, is superb as Stebbins, the lazy alcoholic that Jones is replacing.

The boss figures that Johnny Jones will not be taken seriously with a name like that, so he changes it to “Huntley Haverstock” in order to give him some distinction. The young reporter follows Professor Van Meer from London to Amsterdam, where all the trouble begins. Van Meer is carrying a copy of the treaty between Holland and Belgium, and everybody wants to know what is in that treaty.

The legendary German actor Albert Basseman, then a refugee, plays a grand Professor Van Meer. He quietly but firmly takes command of his situation, which is quite precarious. He did not speak a word of English, so he memorized his lines phonetically.

Carol Fisher (Laraine Day), the daughter of an enemy spy, has latched onto Jones/Haverstock and unwittingly put him in danger. Their romance is a good subplot for the film, not mushy or sentimental. Herbert Marshall manages to make her father, Stephen Fisher, a sympathetic character, despite his willingness to betray the peace organization for which he works.

Jones witnesses the murder of Van Meer and tries to chase down the gunman, but he loses him in the crowd. Later he learns that the victim was a double, and Van Meer is still alive. Deception follows intrigue as Jones tries to find out what is really going on. At first he is after a good story for the newspaper, but by the end he is the valiant hero seeking justice.

At the beginning, Jones is not even aware of the crisis in Europe that Nazi imperialism has raised. He is blissfully ignorant of politics and world affairs. By the end, however, he is urging Americans to wake up and join the war effort to stop Hitler’s evil machine from world domination.

Analysis

Like many Hitchcock films, Foreign Correspondent is like an amusement park that takes you from the roller coaster to the funhouse and then back to the roller coaster.

This film has some stunning visual effects, especially for its time. In the opening, for example, the camera takes us in a single shot from the globe on top of a skyscraper, to the windows on the side of the building, and then through a window to the inside the newspaper office. The scenes with the windmills are awesome, too. Then there is the scene at Westminster Cathedral, where a Nazi thug tries to push Jones off a tower to his death. The final scene, in which the plane crashes into the sea, is awesome. They did not have computer graphics in 1940, so Hitchcock used a tank of water, a studio cockpit and a rear-projection screen to produce the visual effects.

Jones is the Everyman, representing all Americans in the isolationist atmosphere before the United States entered World War II. In fact, technically the war had not yet broken out, although the Germans had already invaded a few of their neighbors. I love the way he keeps losing his bowler hat, which he bought for the trip. He thinks that the English hat will give him English respectability, but he can’t hang onto it. By the end, he is wearing an American fedora, not an English bowler hat. There is also some discussion of “talking through your hat”.

Hitchcock films always have a MacGuffin, the thing that everybody wants. In this case, it is the treaty that Professor Van Meer carries with him when he leaves London for Amsterdam. The MacGuffin motivates the characters, so they have a reason for the things that they do.

There are quite a few coincidences that probably would not happen in real life. For example, four of the six people who survive the plan crash happen to be the main characters, the stars of the film. In addition, some of the characters show up at just the right time, with no reason given for them to be there. This is especially true of the love interest, Carole Fisher.

Recommendation

This film flirts with greatness, so I highly recommend it.

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Thank you so much for reading my movie review!

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Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV