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 Foreign Correspondent (1940)
Director:
Alfred Hitchcock
Stars: Joel McCrea, Laraine Day, Albert Bassermann
Release Company:
Warner Home Video
MPAA Rating: NR
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"Two characters: the killer, a Jack-the-Ripper type, behind the girl, his victim. As his shadow creeps up on her, she turns and screams. Immediately, we pan down to the struggling feet in the tulip field. We would dolly the camera up to and right into one of the tulips, with the sounds of the struggle in the background. One petal fills the screen, and suddenly a drop of blood splashes all over it."
The above scene never takes place in Foreign Correspondent,
but this imaginary murder scene would have occurred
had Hitchcock
been able to film in color. Instead, he settles for
a great sequence at a windmill since part of the film
takes place in Holland. Hitch always had a penchant
for incorporating landmarks into his cinematic landscape--from
the Statue of Liberty to Mt. Rushmore to the Golden
Gate Bridge to Royal Albert Hall--so here he chooses
a local icon to firmly establish location.
Created the same year as Hitchcock's
remarkable Rebecca
(and actually nominated alongside it for Best Picture),
it's a film that has received little attention over
the years due to the perception that it is dated and
part of the canon of "propaganda" films urging victory
over Hitler and the evil Axis powers. Although it's
true that the protagonist's direct final plea to "keep
the lights burning" is designed to awaken a "sleeping"
America to join the British in the war effort, the
overlooked film continues to stand up as a fine spy
thriller with quintessential Hitchcockian characters,
themes, dry humor, suspense, and innovative camera
technique. Fortunately, Warner Home Video has now
released an excellent DVD edition that includes an
insightful featurette that gives Foreign Correspondent
its due.
Based initially on Vincent Sheean's autobiographical
memoir, Hitchcock
completely revamped the story with screenwriters Charles
Bennett and Joan Harrison and collaborated with James
Hilton and Robert Benchley for additional dialogue
(additionally hiring Benchley for a supporting role
because he read so well and perfectly added droll
British humor). Hitchcock
wasn't able to convince Gary Cooper to take the lead
role (a mistake he later admitted to Hitch), but Joel
McCrea aptly plays the stubborn New York Globe reporter
Johnnie Jones/Huntley Haverstock who is assigned to
Europe to drum up real news just before the outbreak
of World War II. He gets mixed up with a peace organization
headed by Stephen Fisher (Herbert Marshall), whose
daughter Carol (Laraine Day) provides a love interest.
Supplying a worthy Oscar nomination for supporting
performance (despite his short on-screen time), Albert
Bassermann plays the masculine counterpart to the
elderly lady of The
Lady Vanishes as Dutch diplomat Van
Meer. Setting the old statesman up as the world's
only hope for peace, he knows the “secret clause”
that serves as Hitch's MacGuffin here. Virtually every
Hitchcock
thriller contains this plot device, which is of no
real importance itself, but helps carry the story
along. On the DVD extras, Peter Bogdanovich relates
Hitchcock's
favorite illustration for the MacGuffin:
"It
might be a Scottish name, taken from a story about
two men in a train. One man says, 'What's that package
up there in the baggage rack?'
And the other answers, 'Oh, that's a MacGuffin.'
The first one asks, 'What's a MacGuffin?'
Well, the other man says, 'it's an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands.'
The first man says, 'But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands,' and the other one answers, 'Well then, that's no MacGuffin!'
So you see that a MacGuffin is actually nothing at all."
In addition to The Lady Vanishes,
Hitchcock
aficionados will find lots of delightful parallels
to many other films in his canon, most specifically
to North
by Northwest since the innocent protagonist
also finds himself inadvertently embroiled in a spy
ring, meets his foes in an isolated rural location,
falls in love with a woman connected to enemy spies,
and must escape half-clothed from confinement. The
film also plays on Hitchcock's theme where the villain
always appears suave and sophisticated, developing
his character with nuance to the point where he even
performs a heroic act. Further clouding audience expectations
is veteran character actor George Sanders (most noted
for playing villains) taking on the role of one of
the good guys this time. Nothing can be painted purely
black and white in Hitch's world--shades of gray consistently
dominate his characters' landscape.
His incomparable black and white photography continues to dominate the screen, with a great assassination scene among umbrella toting onlookers and a suspenseful sequence at the windmill. His most spectacular technical achievement occurs when a plane plunges into the ocean. It's set up with transparent paper covering a water tank right immediately behind it, so the shot is done in a single shot without a cut with the push of a button. With the DVD you can pause the screen at the precise spot this occurs to see a split-second tear in the paper, but it's remarkable how well the 64 year old technique holds up in light of the much smoother CGI effects that would be used today.
The real crime is that this vastly under-rated film
has laid dormant for so long because it's highly entertaining
and includes some great performances. Although sentenced
to the shadows by Rebecca
and deemed dated by its WWII content, Foreign Correspondent
paints relevant portraits that modern audiences can
certainly relate to in this day of "embedded journalists."
Without charismatic actors like Cary Grant, Jimmy
Stewart, Grace Kelly, or Ingrid Bergman to work with,
the strength of this film lies with Hitchcock's incredible
narrative ability and cinematic vision. It may rank
among Hitchcock's
lesser "B" movies (as Truffaut indicates), but there's
plenty to enjoy here! |
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