Foreign Correspondent

1940 "The thrill spectacle of the year!"
7.4| 2h0m| NR| en| More Info
Released: 16 August 1940 Released
Producted By: Walter Wanger Productions
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Synopsis

American crime reporter John Jones is reassigned to Europe as a foreign correspondent to cover the imminent war. When he walks into the middle of an assassination and stumbles on a spy ring, he seeks help from a beautiful politician’s daughter and an urbane English journalist to uncover the truth.

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Reviews

RyothChatty ridiculous rating
Matrixiole Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.
Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.
Fleur Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.
Leofwine_draca Right from the start I knew I loved this movie. It's truly a Hitchcock classic, miles ahead of the last fluffy outing I saw from the director – STAGE FRIGHT – and a film with all the elements: mystery, suspense, romance, thrills, chills, and more besides. The globetrotting story sees our innocuous hero – Joel McCrea, playing one of Hitchcock's most appealing leading men – travelling to Holland and becoming involved with spies and conspirators. This is a film where nobody is who they seem to be and the action is thoroughly engaging. In some ways it reminds me of an early predecessor to the Bourne films: our hero's always on the move, outwitting sinister agents at every angle and narrowly avoiding death along the way too.The film is punctuated with vivid set-pieces. The early assassination sequence is shocking and gruesome, and it leads into a thrilling car chase. Then there's an extraordinarily suspenseful sequence inside a creaking windmill where our hero tries not to get caught – brilliant stuff indeed that defines the very word 'suspense'. Then there's the escape from the hotel room, the wonderful interlude in which our hero is accompanied by a bodyguard who's secretly out to kill him (one of the funniest things I've ever seen and the perfect mixture of laughs and thrills), a grisly torture scene, and even a major plane crash thrown in at the climax. Of course, all these moments are directed to the hilt by Hitchcock and among his best work.The cast is assured and indeed there isn't a bum performance among them. Particularly noteworthy are Herbert Marshall in a difficult role and a cocky George Sanders as a fellow reporter. I have to say, though, that Edmund Gwenn is the scene-stealer here as the immensely likable assassin. He's only in the film ten minutes but those ten minutes help to make the movie. Brilliant stuff indeed.
disinterested_spectator Alfred Hitchcock popularized the term "MacGuffin" as being "what the spies are after, but the audience doesn't care." In this movie, the MacGuffin is Clause 27 of a treaty between two countries. It is a secret clause, so secret in fact that it is only known to the two people who signed the treaty, because it was never written down.Now, whether it is a treaty, a contract, or any other kind of agreement, the whole point in writing it down and having people sign it is so that there is no question as to what was agreed to. Anything not written down can be denied later, especially since there are no witnesses to this oral agreement between the two signatories. I guess we are to assume that the two diplomats trust each other so much that an oral agreement and a handshake will suffice.This raises the question as to how anyone other than the two signatories knows of the existence of Clause 27. The spies know about it, as does Scott ffolliott, so I guess the two signatories must have announced that they had signed a treaty with an unwritten clause. It seems to me it would have been better to keep not only the content of the clause a secret, but its existence as well.One of the signatories is Van Meer. To find out what is in Clause 27, the spies kidnap Van Meer with the idea of torturing him until he talks. But to keep the world from knowing that Van Meer has been kidnapped, they get a man who looks like Van Meer to take his place so he can be assassinated. Presumably, the impostor did not know about that part of the plan.If the world thinks Van Meer has been assassinated, then that means that as far as everyone else is concerned, only one person knows what is in Clause 27. Van Meer might have trusted this other fellow, but can we expect the country he represented to honor a secret clause whose content is known only to the diplomat of the other country and take his word for it? So with Van Meer's faked assassination, it would seem that the clause has just become worthless. Or maybe the spies were planning on releasing Van Meer after he spilled his guts saying, "Fooled you. Van Meer is alive after all, but you still have to honor the secret clause that we now know about."Moving right along, if I had been Van Meer and the spies started torturing me to tell what was in Clause 27, I would have just made up something. After all, it's a secret, so how would the spies have known the difference?But enough of this. The point of the MacGuffin, as noted above, is to give the spies something to pursue that the audience is not expected to care about. But that's just the problem. Maybe we are not supposed to care about what the MacGuffin is, but we sure are supposed to care about what makes the MacGuffin important. Over and over again, we are continually being prodded with a preachy message about the need to take a strong stand against Germany. In short, this is another of Hitchcock's propaganda films, the first one being "The Lady Vanishes" (1938). This is why Stephen Fisher, who is the leader of the Universal Peace Party, a pacifist organization, actually turns out to be a Nazi spy. You can't trust those peaceniks. The problem is not with the message per se, but with the enervating effect of propaganda. Who wants to watch a movie and be lectured to? Of course, there are enough good scenes in the movie, especially the one in the windmill, to make the movie enjoyable overall, but it is somewhat spoiled by the warmongering.Fisher has a daughter named Carol who is the love interest of the title character, Johnny Jones, who is forced to take on the pseudonym of Huntley Haverstock. He agrees to get Carol to go to the country with him so that ffolliott can make Fisher think his daughter has been kidnapped and thus arrange a prisoner exchange for Van Meer. The pretense is that Haverstock needs to hide from the spies, who are trying to kill him, because he knows who they are. When Carol and Haverstock get to Cambridge, they get a room at a hotel.Ooh la la. One room for the two of them! Even if it is just for the afternoon, it sounds very cozy, and Carol seems just fine with it. But then ffolliott calls Haverstock and tells him he needs more time to talk to Fisher, and so Haverstock will need to keep Carol there overnight. Haverstock agrees and makes an arrangement with the hotel for another room for Carol. Carol overhears this and is appalled.Now, I know that things back then were different regarding sex, but I cannot figure this one out. The very fact that Haverstock is getting a separate room for her indicates that his intentions are honorable. But the woman who was just fine having one room for the afternoon is outraged that he would get a separate room for her for the night. I guess she thought that the second room was just for appearances, and that he was planning on slipping into her room later that evening, just the sort of thing a man might have on his mind while hiding from spies who want to assassinate him. Since they were hiding from the spies, she should have figured that something had come up necessitating a longer stay. The reasonable thing for her to do was go up to him and say, "Why are you getting another room for me so we can stay overnight?" But not much else in this movie makes sense, so there is no reason for this scene to be any different.
gavin6942 On the eve of WWII, a young American reporter (Joel McCrea) tries to expose enemy agents in London.Who would have made the better lead, Joel McCrea or Gary Cooper? This is something to ask because Cooper turned own the role. Now, of course, we have the film we have because McCrea is the lead. But looking back now (in 2014), Cooper is far more notable than McCrea... it might have provided the film a higher status later on. Assuming, of course, Cooper could match McCrea's level.Foreign Correspondent was nominated for six Academy Awards, including one for Albert Bassermann for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, but did not win any. (The film lost Best Picture to "Rebecca", another Hitchcock film, so that was something of a consolation prize.) Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels called the film "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." Flattering or horrifying that Goebbels would even comment?
robert-temple-1 This rather unconvincing Hitchcock film was clearly made with a war-rousing purpose, and the end credits feature the American anthem 'The Star Spangled Banner' being sung with great gusto. The aim was to try to persuade a reluctant American public to enter the war against Hitler. The story is intended to glorify American foreign correspondents who are bringing the truth home to the American public about the horrendous events in Europe. However, the story line somewhat belies this theme, because the New York editor is frustrated that the existing foreign correspondents are no good, and in desperation he seeks for a crime reporter with no knowledge of foreign affairs whatever to be sent to Europe to try to get the facts. The reporter in question has to his credit that he recently knocked out a policeman in pursuit of a crime story, and he is expecting to be sacked at any moment. Step forward, Joel McCrea, a droll but earnest leading man ready to blunder his way through complexities and ready to love Laraine Day as soon as he meets her. So he gets the job and sails to England where he commences uncovering the dastardly actions of Gestapo spies, and immediately he becomes entangled with them. There are numerous trademark Hitchcock touches in the film. On a visit to the Netherlands (when will people stop calling it Holland, as Holland is merely a single province of the Netherlands and not the name of the country?) McCrea is chasing some Nazis spies, who then disappear into a windmill. McCrea notices that the sails of the windmill keep reversing the direction of their turning. They are clearly on a motor, and this is a signal to a plane to land to pick up the spies. McCrea also escapes from a hotel room by edging along the balcony high above the street, another perilous scene of the kind Hitchcock loved. But the most harrowing of all the scenes in this film is when McCrea, Day, Herbert Marshall and others are all flying on the clipper to America from London on the day war breaks out between Britain and Germany, and a German naval ship shoots down their plane. The plane crashes into the sea and a few of then cling to a floating wing. It is all very convincing and impressive. So, as I have said, there are 'moments' in this film which are up to standard, but the film as a whole is a bit thin. Robert Benchley appears throughout the film as the incompetent regular foreign correspondent, and makes wisecracks and wry observations, such as: 'I send the press releases back to New York and they pay me a salary,' or words to that effect, a practice not unknown today.