FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT (1940)
DECEMBER 3

The reporter Joel McCrea plays in Foreign Correspondent (1940) is prepared to do just about anything to get at the truth: he lies to his colleagues, to his girlfriend, even to the U.S. Navy. What a scoundrel! Man, I wish there were more reporters like him.

The story is set on the eve of World War II, but Hitchcock's film has 21st-century relevance. McCrea is sent to Europe--without any overseas experience-- because his editor is frustrated at the inability of his famous foreign correspondents to generate any real news out of the European capitals. Nobody says so in the film, but I imagine correspondents too chummy with the diplomats they cover, concerned more with lunch at the Savoy than a secret meeting with an envoy (don't pretend you're not impressed with that wordplay). So McCrea heads to London to see just how close Europe is to war.

While there, he meets up with the leader of an influential Universal Peace Party (Herbert Marshall), falls in love with his daughter (Laraine Day) and works with a dapper British reporter (George Sanders) to uncover an international spy ring which may or may not involve the Peace Party.

This was just Hitchcock's second picture in the U.S. (Rebecca hit theaters earlier in 1940), but many of his visual signatures are on display. When a diplomat is assassinated in Amsterdam, everyone in the crowd-- EVERYONE--holds an umbrella. And Hitchcock shoots the gunman trying to escape from overhead, just a ripple in a sea of black umbrellas. Later, Hitchcock gives us a sensational plane crash, using a stunt plane diving toward the ocean, rear-projected on rice paper in front of a cockpit set.

That's Hitchcock. Who needs CGI?

by Ben Mankiewicz