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Foreign Correspondent
original film poster
Directed by	Alfred Hitchcock
Written by	Charles Bennett Joan Harrison
Starring	Joel McCrea Laraine Day Herbert Marshall George Sanders
Editing by	Dorothy Spencer
Release date(s)	August 16, 1940 (U.S. release) United Artists
Language	English
IMDb profile

Foreign Correspondent (1940) is a thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock which tells the story of an American reporter who becomes involved in espionage in England during the onset of World War II. It stars Joel McCrea, George Sanders, Laraine Day, Herbert Marshall, Albert Bassermann, and Robert Benchley.

The film had an unusually large number of writers: Robert Benchley, Charles Bennett, Harold Clurman, Joan Harrison, Ben Hecht, James Hilton, John Howard Lawson, John Lee Mahin, Richard Maibaum, and Budd Schulberg, with Bennett, Benchley, Harrison, and Hilton the only writers credited in the finished film. It was based on Vincent Sheean's political memoir Personal History (New York: Doubleday, 1935), the rights to which were purchased by producer Walter Wanger for $10,000 in 1935.

The film was one of two Alfred Hitchcock films nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture in the 1941 Academy Awards. The other film was Rebecca, which went on to win the award. Bassermann was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. The film was nominated for a total of six acadamy awards. It did not win any.

The movie is memorable for such visuals as a flat field of windmills in which the sails of one windmill are mysteriously turning in the opposite direction from the others, or the dramatic shooting of a diplomat's decoy on the crowded steps of a public building, after which the assassin dashes through a crowd of onlookers, as from above Hitchcock's camera follows his progress by showing a line of disturbed and jostled umbrellas in an otherwise unbroken sea of bumbershoots.

Johnny Jones (McCrea) is appointed as the Foreign Correspondent for the New York Globe by the Globes editor Mister Powers, under the name of Huntley Haverstock. A Mister Stephen Fisher, leader of the Universal Peace Party is going to meet him in London. While in London, Jones (Haverstock) sees Van Meer (Bassermann) entering a car which is to take him to the party. Jones runs to interview him when Van Meer talks him in to riding with him. When they arrive at the party Van Meer disappears mysteriously. At the same party some time later Jones meets Fisher's daughter Carol Fisher (played by Laraine Day). At the same party some time later, Fisher informs all the guests that Van Meer (who was supposed to be the guest of honor), was not going to attend the party but was going to be seen at a political conference in Amsterdam. In Amsterdam the latter is seemingly killed in front of a large crowd. Jones follows the assassin's getaway car and hops into a car yelling 'follow that car,' seeing Carol again in the car with another man, Scott ffolliott (no capital letter at the beginning of the surname because one of his ansestors had his head cut of by Henry VIII, the capital was dropped in memory of the event). He follows the assassin's car to a windmill in the countryside, where he discovers that the real Van Meer is still alive (the one killed was an impostor). However, he is being drugged by the enemy to preserve him. Van Meer manages to tell Jones nothing. Jones escapes in a thrilling windmill chase scene. He also has found the (fake) Van Meer's assassin's car. He calls the police but when they arrive the vehicle is gone, and the kidnappers have escaped with Van Meer in a plane. Some time later two spies dressed as policemen arrive at Jones' hotel room to kidnap him. Not knowing that these fake police officers are kidnappers, Jones tries to use his phone to [supposedly] cancel his dinner date. Unable to get through, he realizes that his phone line has been cut, and he now suspects that the "policemen" are in fact spies.

He coolly asks if he can take a bath in his hotel bathroom, which the spies permit. He escapes out the window and enters Carol Fisher's bedroom, which was coincidentally just ten meters away from his. From there he phones for several hotel servants to go to his hotel room simultaneously. He calls the police from Carol's telephone. While all the fight is going on between the police and hotel servants, Jones orders a man to get him an evening jacket, shirt, tie, etc... From there they escape onto a British boat sailing back to England. In England the two go to Carol's father. At his house is a man, whom Jones realizes is the man he saw at the windmill. Jones tells this to Fisher who ignores it, but says that he will send a bodyguard to guard Jones so he is not 'killed.' He narrowly escapes being killed by a truck after being pushed out on to the road by the assassin posing as the bodyguard (Edmund Gwenn).The bodyguard/assassin attempts to push him off the ledge of the Westminster Cathedral tower, but Jones steps aside just in time, and the 'bodyguard' plunges to his death instead. After this he and ffolliott are convinced that Fisher is a traitor who is covering up spies and war criminals. ffolliott, focusing more on Van Meer, claims to Fisher that he kidnapped Carol and that he won't let her go unless he told him where Van Meer was. Fisher naturally refuses to tell him. Enraged by Fisher's refusal he leaves him. He then finds out that Van Meer is being held at a hotel that is covering up for Fisher and his organization. After Jones arrives at the scene Fisher and his bodyguards escape the hotel room and leave Van Meer behind. Van Meer is rushed to the hospital and is in a coma.

While all this is going on, England declares war on Germany. Then, while on a seaplane (a really cheesy model that looks like a Boeing 314 PanAm Clipper, but isn't). Fisher confesses to his daughter. Nevertheless, Carol blames Jones for not really loving her and only wanting to pursue her father. Jones protests that he's just doing his job as a reporter but Carol refuses to listen. But just seconds later, the plane is shelled by a German warship, and ultimately crashes. A sneering, spoiled woman is shot dead in the shelling.

The plane sinks and many trapped passengers drown. Survivors who were able to escape get on the floating wing of the downed plane, but the wing cannot handle all of the weight. Realizing that the wing cannot support all the survivors, including his daughter, Stephen Fisher commits suicide by drowning himself. Jones and ffolliott heroically attempt to rescue Fisher, but they are unsuccessful and are forced to return to the floating wing. After surviving the crash, Carol, Jones and ffolliott are taken to an American warship. Jones makes a call to his boss Mr. Powers in New York, head of the New York Globe. As he is talking on the phone ffolliott tells Jones that he is not allowed to report anything to his newspaper. As the commander of the ship storms into the room Jones says "Mr. Powers, don't hang up and keep your ear pinned to the phone," meaning that Jones leaves the line open and Mr. Powers listens on the other end as Jones tells his story. The plan works, Powers publishes the story down and rushes it to the printing room after Carol proves the veracity of the story by identifying herself as Fisher's daughter identifying Fisher as the traitor and letting the world know the truth.

And in the glorious grand finale Jones is making a radio broadcast over a speaker, Carol sitting by his side, as the eve of WWII rises. Everyone hides in the shelters to escape the German bomb raids but Jones and Carol are standing alone in the broadcasting room.

He makes a truly glorious speech over the broadcast "because [he] knows they're listening in America," as the screen fades outs in a truly epic grand finale.

Johnny Jones is speaking on BBC Radio when a bomb raid commences. Everyone but Jones and Carol flee to the bomb shelter. Jones carries on speaking.

Carol: They're listening in America.

Jones: Okay, we'll tell 'em then. I can't read the rest of the speech I had, 'cause the lights have gone out, so I'll just have to speak from the cuff. All that noise you hear isn't static - it's death, and its coming to London. Yes, they're coming here now. You can hear the bombs falling on the streets and on the homes. Don't tune me out now, hang on a while - this is a big story, and you're part of it, it's too late to do anything here now except to stand in the dark and let them come... as if the lights were all out everywhere, except in America. But keep those lights burning, cover them with steel, ring them with guns, build a canopy of battleships and bombing planes around them. Hello, America, hang on to your lights: they're the only lights left in this world!

Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines. The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.

• Alfred Hitchcock cameo: When Jones (McCrea) first spots Van Meer (Basserman) on the street in London, Hitchcock walks past reading a newspaper.
• Hitchcock originally wanted Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck to play McCrea and Day's parts.
• Producer Walter Wanger bought the rights to Vincent Sheean's nonfiction book Personal History in 1935, but it took 14 writers and five years before Wanger had a script he was satisfied with. By that time, Hitchcock was in the U.S. under contract with David O. Selznick and available to direct this film on a loan out from Selznick.
• Basserman couldn't speak English (he was German), and had to learn all his lines phonetically. Likewise, one 'Dutch' girl speaks Dutch phonetically, though not quite as convincingly.
• In the windmill scene, the windmills are more Spanish than Dutch in appearance, and the Dutch policeman speaks (broken) German instead of Dutch.
• There is an unmistakable image of Adolf Hitler in the windmill scene. Right after Jones (McCrea) rescues his coat from the grinding gears, and escapes out the window, he peers back in at the spies. In the right hand corner of the scene, there is a cartoon like image of Adolf Hitler formed by a wood beam and unidentified markings. Hitchcock's subtle, almost subliminal reminder of who the bad guys really represent.
• When McCrea flees his hotel room and touches the letter 'E' of the neon 'HOTEL' sign, he burns himself and the letters 'E' and 'L' die, appropriately leaving the word 'HOT' and leaving the hotel's name as 'HOT EUROPE', underscoring the film's theme of war in Europe.
• In the crash scence, when the water is filling the plane and some of the trapped, frantic passengers are about to drown, you can see one of the actors pop his head through the artificial ceiling.
• Nazi Propaganda Minister Goebbels called Foreign Correspondent:

• In one of the last scenes McCrea is making a telephone call from an American ship on the Atlantic to Mr Powers from the New York Globe. At that time it was very unusual to make a phone call from a ship to a land line. It still is.
• The film, which ends with Germany bombing London, opened at the dawn of the Battle of Britain. It opened just three weeks before Germany actually began bombing London, and three days after the Luftwaffe began bombing British coastal airfields in the early Adlerangriff phase of the battle.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Foreign Correspondent (film)

• Foreign Correspondent at the Internet Movie Database
• Foreign Correspondent at the TCM Movie Database