Review of Foreign Correspondent (1940) by Reginald R — 08 Jun 2004

How did this one slip through the cracks? No doubt it's because Alfred Hitchcock directed so many films, and so many damn good films, that a few gems are bound to get overlooked. But what a discovery this movie is.

Joel McCrea is a foreign correspondent sent to 1940 Europe to interview a peace activist. He soon finds himself in the middle of a conspiracy involving Nazis fronting as a peace organization. The movie was nominated for 1940's Best Picture (it lost to Hitchcock's "Rebecca") and it's easy to see why.

But how often is it mentioned in any discussion of Hitchcock's work today? The screenplay is tight and loaded with humor. McCrea portrays reporter Johnny Jones as a man who's happy just getting by, but finds himself having to uncover the intrigue in spite of himself.

His scenes with Laraine Day border on screwball comedy, and the two have such good chemistry together that their inevitable love story hardly seems forced. Also worth singling out are George Sanders as a fellow reporter in over his head, and Edmund Gwenn in a brief but memorable change of pace as a hitman.

The visuals are stunning. The action starts early on with an assassination followed by a chase scene that takes us through an overhead view of a field of umbrellas, a car chase through Amsterdam, and finally a small windmill.

Hitchcock plays his suspense card splendidly as McCrea spies on the villains in the windmill, all the while able to hide from them inside the same mill. The movie ends with a fantastic special effects sequence that must have been mind-blowing to a 1940 audience.

It begins with a plane flying. As the camera closes in on the plane, we find ourselves taken through a window and down the length of the plane, all in one fluid shot. Before long the plane is shot down by a German destroyer, and the ensuing ocean crash reminded me of the same sequence in "Cast Away".

It's an amazing climax even today. And it's a fun and amazing movie. With any luck it'll be rediscovered some day soon and mentioned in the same breath again with such earlier Hitchcock classics as "Shadow of a Doubt" and "Suspicion".