This essay is
Thrilling Days of Yesteryear’s
contribution
to the Fabulous Films of the 1940s Blogathon,
hosted this week (February 17-22) by members of The Classic Movie Blog Association.
For participating blogs and the films discussed, click here for more
information. Oh, and for those of you
who’ve not seen the movie I’ll discuss…be forewarned there are spoilers.
Frequent visitors to
Thrilling
Days of Yesteryear are no doubt aware that my viewing of offerings on The
Greatest Cable Channel Known to Mankind™ has been somewhat curtailed since my
parents and I decided to rent a house together: the ‘rents, as they are
affectionately known, don’t quite share my classic movie mania—preferring to
while away their hours in front of the TV watching sporting events or “reality”
programming featuring very unpleasant individuals conversing with one another
in language that is frequently bleeped for cable. But on occasion, particularly when it’s their
bedtime, I am able to steal out into the living room and turn on
TCM…since
the living room TV is the only set that gets Turner Classic Movies.
It’s been rough this past month, campers. The channel is hosting its annual
31
Days of Oscar event, and many of the films on the schedule I have no
desire to ever watch. Thursday night
(February 14) is a case in point: I had just settled into Count Comfy von Chair
around
10 pm and used the remote to
access
TCM…only to find
Gone with the Wind (1939) already in progress. I have seen
GWTW only one time (I agreed in a moment of weakness to watch it
with a lady friend of mine, who was cuckoo-for-Cocoa-Puffs about the film) and
have no desire to sit through it again because at this point in my life I
simply do not have 3 hours and 42 minutes at my disposal to hand out freely.
I was going to be up for a while, so I stuck around for the
movie that came on afterward—Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca (1940). (Apparently
it was David O. Selznick night.) I’d
already seen Rebecca as well…though in
its defense, the movie doesn’t fill me with nearly the amount of revulsion as GWTW (it’s shorter, for one
thing). But as I watched Rebecca, I couldn’t help but feel that
I would much rather be watching (something I rectified for this blogathon) the
other Hitchcock film that was nominated for Best Picture that same year (and
five additional categories as well): Foreign
Correspondent (1940).
The year is 1939, with the world on the brink of the Second
World War. Powers (Harry Davenport), the
dyspeptic editor of
The New York Globe,
is frustrated by the lack of information coming out of the European theater,
and is disgusted that the paper’s foreign correspondent, the alcoholic Stebbins
(Robert Benchley), cables nothing but news of crop failures. Powers’ idea is to assign a crime journalist
to cover
Europe, and offers a beat reporter named Johnny
Jones (Joel McCrea) the assignment.
“Give me an expense account and I’ll cover anything,” responds
Jones—though he admits he’ll have to bone up on the crisis first. Powers tells him to never mind—he wants a
fresh perspective on the reporting, and after introducing Jones to Stephen
Fisher (Herbert Marshall), the head of an organization known as the Universal
Peace Party, sends Jones on his way…but not before giving Jones a new identity
in “Huntley Haverstock.” “’Jones’ will
only handicap you,” explains Powers, apparently unaware that “Huntley
Haverstock” doesn’t exactly come trippingly off the tongue.
Arriving in
London,
Jones meets correspondent Stebbins…and also makes the acquaintance of Dutch
diplomat Van Meer (Albert Bassermann), with whom he shares a taxi as both men
are on their way to an event sponsored by Fisher’s Universal Peace Party. Jones is also introduced to Fisher’s daughter
Carol (Laraine Day)—though he’s not aware of the father-daughter relationship
at their first meet. Instead, Jones
angers Carol by playing the “ugly American,” criticizing their group as being
run by “well-meaning amateurs.” Johnny
only learns that Carol is Fisher’s daughter when she must speak in place of Van
Meer, who has sent his regrets at having been called away at the last moment.
Jones’ next assignment sends him to
Amsterdam
to be present at a political conference where Fisher and Van Meer will also be
attending. In fact, Johnny spots Van
Meer coming up the stairs outside the building and greets him…but the diplomat
doesn’t seem to recognize Johnny or remember that they shared a cab previously
in
London. A photographer asks to take Van Meer’s
picture, and when the diplomat acquiesces the shutterbug pulls out a concealed
gun and shoots Van Meer in the face. As
the assassin makes his escape through a sea of umbrellas, Jones gives chase…and
lucks into finding a car to go after the fleeing killer, with Carol as
passenger and a fellow newspaperman, Scott ffoilliott (George Sanders) at the
wheel.
The trail of the assassin leads to a windmill, and while
Scott and Carol go off in search of the police, Johnny investigates inside…and
finds Van Meer very much alive and held hostage in an upstairs room. Van Meer reveals that his assassination was
faked because the spies who are holding him captive want to spirit him away and
extract a vital piece of information from him.
Jones manages to escape before the villains detect his presence, but by
the time Carol and Scott return with the police, the miscreants have
disappeared save for a hobo (Martin Kosleck) who says he’s been sleeping inside
the windmill all day and saw no one that matches Johnny’s description.
Back in his hotel room, Jones receives a visit from two men
who claim to be policemen…but Johnny quickly deduces that they’re working for
the people who put the snatch on Van Meer.
He’s able to elude them with the help from a reluctant Carol; the two of
them manage to board a ship back to
England
in the nick of time and during their trip reveal their love for one
another. Carol and Johnny then go to her
father’s home to inform him about Van Meer…but Jones recognizes a guest of
Fisher’s—introduced as Krug (Eduardo Ciannelli)—as one of the spies from the
windmill. Fisher tells Johnny he’ll
handle the situation…and that’s when we learn that Fisher is working in tandem
with the spies. Krug suggests that
Fisher employ a thug named Rowley (Edmund Gwenn) to be bodyguard for
Johnny—though Rowley’s intent will really be to silence the reporter
permanently. Rowley’s assassination
attempt fails when the “bodyguard” falls to his death from atop the
tower
of Westminster Cathedral.
 |
| Nothing ever happens in a Hitchcock film by accident. As Johnny Jones (Joel McCrea) makes his escape from the spies at the windmill, a wooden beam and several markings form a crude caricature of Hitler, as you can see in the space to McCrea's right. |
Johnny now knows that Fisher is not whom he claims to
be—something that ffoilliott has also been aware of for some time, and Scott
suggests they pool their resources to find Van Meer’s whereabouts and expose
Fisher by pretending to “kidnap” Carol.
(In actuality, the two men talk her into taking Johnny on a trip to
Cambridge.) Scott’s blackmail attempt fails when Carol
returns home unexpectedly, but he’s able to trail Fisher to where the spies are
holding Van Meer and has left word with Stebbins to have Johnny follow him when
he returns.
The spies are torturing Van Meer to reveal a secret clause
from a treaty signed by
Holland and
Belgium—something
Scott is forced to witness when he is captured at gunpoint by underlings
working with the spies. Scott is able to
distract the spies before Van Meer can spill the beans, and as Johnny and
Stebbins arrive on the scene Fisher and the rest of the spies manage to
escape. Van Meer is alive but in a coma,
and he is taken to a hospital while Jones and ffoilliott book passage on a
plane that both Fisher are taking to
America.
On the plane, ffoilliott gets word that the authorities will
be waiting to pick Fisher up once the aircraft lands because Van Meer has
regained consciousness and explained the situation to the authorities. Carol has since learned the truth about her
father, but vows to stick by him despite his activities…and Johnny, desperately
in love with Carol, is reluctant to see her father arrested because that might
put a damper on the wedding and all.
Fortunately for Fisher, he’ll go out a hero despite being a rat—the
plane is strafed by a German destroyer, and in order to save the survivors from
sinking in the drink he sacrifices himself by jumping off the plane’s wing so
that the others may live. The surviving
passengers are picked up by an American ship, the Mohican, and despite orders
from the captain (Emory Parnell) Johnny is able to give the story to Powers at
the
Globe through a bit of
chicanery (aided and abetted by ffoilliott).
The film ends with an epilogue in which Johnny and Carol broadcast a
patriotic speech to
U.S.
audiences from a
London studio as
the city is being shelled by the Germans.
The old maxim of “too many cooks spoil the soup” does not
apply to
Foreign Correspondent—who employed
a passel of scribes to work on the constantly evolving screenplay. Charles Bennett and Joan Harrison were
credited with the final result (and received an Academy Award nomination for
their efforts) with additional dialogue by James Hilton and Robert Benchley—but
Harold Clurman, John Howard Lawson, John Lee Mahin, Richard Maibaum and Budd
Schulberg also contributed to the script, which was based on the memoir
Personal History, written by
Vincent Sheean. The final radio studio
sequence was written by Ben Hecht and grafted onto the production at the last
minute, influenced by Hitchcock’s return from
London
in July of 1940—where he reported that
Germany
had plans to bomb the city at any time.
At a time when the major studios were reluctant to tackle the subject of
the war in
Europe for fear of cheesing off foreign movie
markets this last sequence was pretty daring stuff (though it was an
independent production financed by Walter Wanger and released through United
Artists).
Hitchcock didn’t particularly get along with Wanger, but
working on
Foreign Correspondent was
a breeze compared to his legendary battles with Selznick. He was fortunate in that the notoriously
finicky producer pretty much stayed out of his hair during Hitch’s work on
Rebecca (since Selznick was distracted
by
GWTW) but by the time
Correspondent went into production the
Master of Suspense was already receiving Selznick’s infamous memos. Selznick may have been willing to loan out
Hitchcock to Wanger but he said no to Sir Alfred when the director wanted Joan
Fontaine for the female lead, so Hitch had to make do with Laraine Day, who was
best known to movie audiences at the time for her appearances in the
Dr. Kildare films as Lew Ayres’ love
interest (nurse Molly Lamont). Hitchcock
also ended up casting Joel McCrea as his hero when Gary Cooper turned him down
(Coop wasn’t interested in making a spy thriller) but the actor later told the
director “I’ve made a huge mistake” in a manner that would have made Gob Bluth
proud.
Because of the casting of McCrea and Day as the leads in
this film,
Foreign Correspondent never
really got the respect that most of Hitchcock’s major films received—though the
critical reaction was mostly positive, more than a few called the movie a
glorified B-film. I think this does a
disservice to the film—I’ve long championed McCrea as one of the most
underrated film actors of his generation, with a range that extended everywhere
from comedy to westerns…and I think Day is splendid in the film as well,
acquitting herself very nicely in her role and demonstrating a rather sweet
chemistry with her co-star. Their
celebrated scene on the boat back to
London—in
which both of them declare their love and intention to marry, prompting
McCrea’s character to crack: “
Hmm…that cuts down
our love scene quite a bit, doesn't it?”—was supposedly
inspired by Hitchcock’s real-life proposal to his future bride, Alma Reville.
In addition to McCrea and Day, I think the casting in Correspondent is one of the reasons why
I have such an affection for the film…beginning with Herbert Marshall, whose
suave and debonair manner makes him one of Hitchcock’s great deceptive
villains—the revelation that he is part of the spy ring who’s kidnapped Van
Meer comes as quite a shock, even though viewers are kind of tipped off to the
fact that there’s something not quite kosher about him by the presence of a
rather sinister-looking dog. In Correspondent, actors frequently play
against type: Edmund Gwenn, whom we remember fondly as “Santa Claus” from the
beloved Miracle on 34th Street
(1947), effectively plays a ruthless assassin.
Both Marshall and Gwenn had worked with Hitch before (Marshall in Murder!; Gwenn in The Skin Game, Waltzes from
Vienna and the future The Trouble with
Harry) and their performances here stand as two of the best of their
careers.
 |
| Another great visual moment (in three separate scenes): an establishing shot of Jones' hotel in Holland... |
 |
| ...then a close-up of Johnny's typewriter, announcing to his editor he's "hot on [the] trail"... |
 |
| ...and punctuates this during his escape from the spies in his hotel room by accidentally putting the "E" and "L" out of commission (which also comments that the situation on the continent is indeed "hot"). |
My favorite character in
Foreign Correspondent is the one essayed by George Sanders…and
while I’m not saying that Sanders
always
played villainous sorts throughout his film career (he was the hero in both the
Saint and
Falcon film series cranked out at RKO) he had a screen persona that
can be summed up in just one word: cad.
So even when he gets to be the good guy, he’s still unable to shake that
taint of the roué off of him—it’s his Scott ffoilliott who suggests that the
way to getting Fisher is by kidnapping his daughter (fighting fire with fire,
so to speak). (When ffoilliott thinks
his bluff with Fisher has succeeded…only to learn that the information as to
Van Meer’s whereabouts is simply a note that informs him Fisher heard his
daughter’s car pulling up—you kind of can’t help but admire Fisher’s
cleverness.) The sequence where
ffoilliott infiltrates the spies’ nest is one of the highlights of Sanders’
screen career: “I would gladly relieve the young lady of this embarrassment,
but you know how women are with firearms—they have no sense of
timing.”
Of course, a few of the actors in the film were cast to do
what they do best: Eduardo Ciannelli, already known for playing bad guys (he
made a terrific villain in the serial
Mysterious
Dr. Satan released that same year), is memorably menacing as the thuggish
Krug…and Martin Kosleck was already on his way to becoming the silver screen’s
go-to Nazi officer. Robert Benchley, the
humorist who was originally hired to write additional dialogue for
Correspondent, was drafted into playing
comic relief as the alcoholic Stebbins (though he explains to Jones he’s on the
wagon, even comically drinking a glass of milk). Albert Bassermann only has a few scenes as
Van Meer but his performance impressed enough of his peers that he was
nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar (maybe it was because Bassermann
spoke no English, and had to learn his lines phonetically). Other familiar character faces in the film
include Harry Davenport, Charles Halton, Ian Wolfe, Barbara Pepper, Gertrude
Hoffman, Holmes Herbert and Emory Parnell (and Joan Leslie plays McCrea’s
sister in the scene where his family is giving him the send-off on the boat!).
Foreign Correspondent,
like most great Hitchcock films, contains so many unforgettable set pieces: the
assassination of the fake Van Meer (and the wonderful effect in which the
assassin escapes in a sea of umbrellas), the discovery of the spies in the windmill
(the interior of which was designed by William Cameron Menzies, and it looks
like something out of a Universal horror film) and the exciting plane crash of
the film’s climax, which utilizes deceptively simple special effects but required
a special tub for the studio’s water tank to be built to accommodate actor
Marshall—he lost a leg in World War I and had difficulty swimming. (I always make it a habit to watch
Marshall
in films and am amazed that the actor rarely walks with a limp.) The cinematography by Rudolph Maté is
breathtaking (Maté later became a director himself, helming the likes of
D.O.A. and
When Worlds Collide), the editing by Dorothy Spencer perfection and
Alfred Newman’s film score—which belies the serious nature of the movie with a
cheerful bounciness—is first-rate.
During my two years inside the hallowed halls of
Marshall
University back in the 1980s, I was
fortunate to meet Hitchcock biographer Donald Spoto—who paid the college a
visit in 1983 while he was promoting
The
Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock. Spoto gave a talk at a showing of Hitchcock’s
Psycho (1960), but he also met with
a few of us Speech Broadcasting geeks to discuss the Master’s work…and I
remember telling him how excited I was that I was going to get to see
North by Northwest (1959) that weekend,
which Marshall’s film committee had also scheduled, along with
Rebecca. Spoto told me he wished he could be
there—though he didn’t have much praise for
Rebecca, jibing that “it’s a
Selznick
film.” This might be why I’ve always
preferred
Foreign Correspondent—there’s
no question that it is steeped in Hitchcock-ness, a slight tweaking of the
director’s patented “wrong man” formula (the main character hasn’t been accused
of a crime but is doggedly determined to solve a mystery while constantly in
motion) that zips along in its two-hour running time with all the ferocity of a
cliffhanger serial. (And yes, because of
its six Academy Award nominations,
Correspondent
will be on
TCM’s
31 Days of Oscar
schedule—this Thursday, February 21, at
5:45pm.)
