Foreign Correspondent
With Joel McCrea, Laraine Day, Herbert Marshall.
US, 1940, 35mm, black & white, 119 min.
Deemed a “masterpiece of propaganda” by Josef Goebbels, Hitchcock’s second American film smuggles its interventionist message under cover of a snappy espionage plot. Joel McCrea’s beat reporter is sent to Europe to scoop the impending war, but once there the guileless American finds danger hiding in plain sight: a debonair Peace Party diplomat conspires for war, an assassin poses as a newspaper photographer, and foretelling the open sightlines of North by Northwest’s crop duster sequence, William Cameron Menzies' brilliantly designed windmill spinning against the wind points the way to subterfuge. Ben Hecht dashed off the prescient closing speech imploring American action amidst rumors of an impending bombing campaign; as it happened, the Blitz began less than a month after Foreign Correspondent’s premiere.
Part of film series
Screenings from this program
Vertigo
To Catch a Thief
The Trouble with Harry
The Paradine Case
Stage Fright
Rebecca
Notorious
Rear Window
Dial M for Murder
Lifeboat
Saboteur
Murder!
Family Plot
Under Capricorn
The Man Who Knew Too Much
Spellbound
Strangers on a Train
Torn Curtain
Suspicion
Shadow of a Doubt
