Foreign Correspondent

MOVIE #1,490 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 03.29.24 EVERY OTHER FRIDAY I’M REVIEWING THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ALFRED HITCHCOCK IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER. THIS IS TGI-HITCHOCK! As I’ve previously mentioned, we’re entering the portion of Hitchcock’s filmography where things are starting to get very interesting. While it’s still an unquestionably good movie, I was somewhat disappointed in Rebecca. But I can say without a doubt that we’ve got a new No. 1 in the clubhouse here, as his second picture of 1940 is his best yet (I've got a feeling I'll be saying this a lot in the coming weeks and months). Don’t let the first thirty minutes or so fool you: they seem almost purposefully designed to lull you so that the action which follows is even more intense.

This is the rare film that wears its fervent patriotism on its sleeves and it actually works. When the titular “foreign correspondent” John Jones/Huntley Haverstock (played with a boyish charm by Joel McCrea) delivers his closing radio broadcast to America from London under the shadow of German bombs, I was ready to enlist! (It turns out Nazis make effective film villains even when you don’t see any.)

Stylistically, Hitchcock is at the top of his game. When this gets going, it’s a political thriller that’s never boring. Whether he’s making cheeky visual metaphors out of the scenery…


…showing off some beautiful windmills…


…or expertly pulling off a plane crash in the middle of the ocean with fantastic practical effects…


…there’s so much to look at and consider. The ending set-piece on the falling plane is a masterpiece. 84 years later, and it still looks great…



This is his most ambitious and most successful work yet and I am very excited for the rest of the journey.

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CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ MOVIE #1,489 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #1,491 ⫸

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Foreign Correspondent (a.k.a. Imposter and Personal History) is a 1940 American black-and-white spy thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. It tells the story of an American reporter based in Britain who tries to expose enemy spies involved in a fictional continent-wide conspiracy in the prelude to World War II. It stars Joel McCrea and features 19-year-old Laraine Day, Herbert Marshall, George Sanders, Albert Bassermann, and Robert Benchley, along with Edmund Gwenn. It was released on August 16, 1940.