Alfred Hitchcock’s transfer from his native Britain to Hollywood coincided with the start of the Second World War. The famous director was, on one hand, fortunate to leave his country, embroiled in an increasingly destructive conflict, for the peaceful and neutral United States. However, although Hitchcock was famously apolitical, he nevertheless found a way to serve Britain by advancing its cause among the American public through his works. In this, he had the support of Hollywood, whose studio executives, writers, actors and directors had far more sympathy towards Britain than Nazi Germany. One of them was Walter Wanger, who hired Hitchcock to make the 1940 spy thriller Foreign Correspondent.
The film is based on Personal History, a 1935 autobiographical book by Vincent Sheean, a reporter who became famous for covering the civil war in 1920s China. Wanger, who had bought the film rights, wanted the film to deal with something more relevant, and over the next five years sixteen different screenwriters updated the original script, changing the setting and themes to the Spanish Civil War and similar events that would gradually engulf Europe in the next world conflict.
The actual plot begins in late August 1939, shortly before the start of the Second World War. Mr. Power, editor of the New York Morning Globe, is frustrated because his London correspondent Stebbins (played by Robert Benchley) doesn’t have a clue whether the diplomatic crisis will erupt into armed conflict or not. So, he decides to send crime reporter John Jones (played by Joel McCrea), whose instinct for a good story might compensate for his lack of knowledge of European affairs. In London, he tries to interview Van Meer (played by Albert Basserman), an elderly Dutch diplomat who is leading efforts to prevent war, aided by Stephen Fisher (played by Herbert Marshall), a British politician who leads the Universal Peace Party. Jones, who is smitten with Fisher’s beautiful daughter Carol (played by Laraine Day), follows Van Meer to Amsterdam, only to see him assassinated. He immediately pursues the killers and discovers that the murdered man was an impostor and that the actual Van Meer is held by a gang of spies who want to learn about a secret clause of an international treaty that would be of great interest to an unnamed great power. Jones’s attempts to warn the police of his findings initially fail, and he becomes the target of assassins whom he must evade as Britain comes to the brink of war.
Foreign Correspondent is a good film, but definitely not among Hitchcock’s best. The great skill of the Master of Suspense is still here, especially in a number of innovative and exciting scenes, but all that is sometimes drowned by a chaotic script that often shifts in general tone. The film begins as a comedy and, despite the plot taking place on the continent on the eve of a grand catastrophe, the tone is light-hearted and more in line with screwball comedies than thrillers. Only around halfway through the running time do things get very serious, with a person being brutally (and for 1940s standards rather graphically) murdered in broad daylight. A darker tone continues with scenes of a helpless old man being tortured and finishes with the scene of a seaplane being shot down, resulting in the gruesome deaths of innocent people. That scene, which was partially inspired by the real-life sinking of the passenger ship SS Athenia which occurred at the very start of the war, was introduced to familiarise the US audience with the brutal realities of modern war, where civilians are more likely to suffer than actual military combatants. The scene also featured special effects designed by William Cameron Menzies, which were quite impressive for early 1940s standards. But nothing in the film is as memorable as the final scene, which was, somewhat ironically, brought to the film almost as an afterthought. In it, the protagonist is making a radio broadcast while bombs are falling on London, pleading for Americans to remain the last and best hope for humanity and to protect themselves by rearming. The scene, made shortly before the start of the Battle of Britain and the real-life bombing of London, was prophetically similar to broadcasts by the famous reporter Edward R. Murrow made a few months later. And although the mysterious great power isn’t named, thus allowing the film’s producers to maintain the official line of US neutrality, everyone in 1940 could have easily recognised it as Nazi Germany. Foreign Correspondent worked as a powerful plea for American entry to the war, presumably on the side of the Allies, and its effectiveness was, allegedly, recognised even by Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi minister of propaganda.
Foreign Correspondent also worked as a thriller, although definitely inferior to the high standards Hitchcock would establish in the 1950s. Some of its flaws could be attributed to not-so-fortunate casting. Joel McCrea, a versatile actor who would later become a specialist in Westerns, has often been called a “poor man’s Gary Cooper”, and such characterisation is especially justified here, where he actually served as a replacement for Cooper, who had refused the offer to play Jones (a decision he would later publicly regret). McCrea is good, but still far from the standards set by the likes of Cary Grant or James Stewart. The same can be said for Laraine Day, who is beautiful but who nevertheless looks nothing like the typical Hitchcock icy blonde and who has problems establishing chemistry with McCrea in a rushed and unconvincing romantic subplot. Veteran German actor Albert Basserman leaves a much better impression in the moving role of the elderly diplomat, and such an impression is even better, considering that Basserman didn’t know English well and had to learn all his lines phonetically. Herbert Marshall is also good in the role of a character whose true alignment isn’t revealed until later in the film, and the same can be said of George Sanders, who plays the roguish and semi-comical British reporter ffoliot, another character who might or might not be a villain at the end of the day.
Foreign Correspondent had success at the box office, but a large budget made it unprofitable and one of the few Hitchcock films to end in the red. Its reputation also suffered because of inevitable comparisons with Rebecca, Hitchcock’s earlier film which had deservedly won an Oscar. Foreign Correspondent is nevertheless a good Hitchockian effort that could be recommended even to those who aren’t among the biggest fans of the Master of Suspense.
RATING: 6/10 (++)
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