Foreign Correspondent (1940)
- kbroer
- Mar 8, 2024
- 2 min read
Joel McCrea, Laraine Day, Herbert Marshall, George Sanders
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Available to stream on Prime Video
In wartime Holland and England, American reporter Joel McCrea uncovers spies, meets his true love, and becomes an advocate for the British cause, while the US is still determined on neutrality.
Why we love it: English-born director Alfred Hitchcock includes his trademark artistic and humorous scenes throughout, but the film turns deadly serious in the last scene as McCrea broadcasts from blacked-out London to America, “the only light left in the world.”
Fun Facts:
This was Hitchcock's second movie for an American studio. His first had been Rebecca where he famously did not get along with studio head and producer David O. Selznick. He was happy to be loaned out to make this film with producer Walter Wanger.
There are several iconic Hitchcock scenes that occur in this film -- the scene where a diplomat is assassinated surrounded by a crowd all holding umbrellas; the windmill scene where McCrea notices one of the windmills going the opposite direction from the others; and the plane crash scene, which was quite a technical feat at the time. According to a Hitchcock interview with Dick Cavett in the 1970's, he projected footage taken by a stunt airplane diving into the ocean onto a rice paper screen. Behind the rice paper were two large water tanks that could flood the rice paper and the cockpit at the push of a button making it seem like the plane had crashed right into the ocean.
The film was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Supporting Actor for Albert Bassermann and Best Picture (which it lost to another Hitchcock film from the same year -- Rebecca.)
Albert Bassermann was German and didn't speak English so he learned all of his lines phonetically.
Hitchcock wanted Gary Cooper to play the lead, but Cooper didn't want be in a thriller so the part went to Joel McCrea. This role helped establish McCrea as an all-American hero and leading man.
The film ends with a famous propaganda speech by McCrea urging America to keep the lights on as London is bombed and goes dark. Filming for the movie was already finished, but this final scene was added after Hitchcock visited England and learned that the Germans were expected to start bombing London. The final scene was filmed on July 5 and the bombing started in real life on July 10. Though Hitchcock couldn't explicitly refer to the Germans or Nazis because the US still hadn't entered the War, his message was quite clear.
For reviews of the film from the time, go to the Fan Magazine Reviews page.
Featured Cocktail:
Rob Roy
A drink with a long history, the Rob Roy is a Manhattan made with blended Scotch whisky. Like the Manhattan, the standard version uses sweet vermouth. A dry version would use dry vermouth and a “perfect” version would contain a mixture of sweet and dry vermouth.
2 oz (60 ml) blended Scotch whisky
1½ Tbsp (22.5 ml) sweet vermouth
3 dashes Angostura bitters
Stir ingredients with ice in mixing glass. Strain into chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with speared maraschino cherries. Substitute a lemon twist in the dry and perfect versions.
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