Foreign Correspondent

 SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

I haven’t discussed an Alfred Hitchcock film in a while so I decided on reviewing Foreign Correspondent (1940). The opening credits have a revolving globe of the Earth above a newspaper building to show the universal need to gather international information. The beginning notes pay tribute to foreign correspondents, saying they were out there investigating dangerous situations while the rest of us were watching “rainbows,” an obvious reference to the Wizard of Oz and the isolationism noted in Casablanca.

Powers (the man who is in charge played by Harry Davenport), who is the city editor of the New York Globe (like the Daily Planet?) says he is not getting enough info from his foreign correspondents. He remembers that Johnny Jones (an everyman name) is a tough reporter. Joel McCrea plays the character and excels in the role. Jones has been proficient in solving criminal activity and Powers wants to find out about the “crime” that Nazi Germany is hatching. He notes that Jones beat up a policeman working on one story, which most likely refers to Hitchcock’s well-known fear of cops.

Jones is ripping up newspapers and making them into snowflakes, showing his cynicism about the profession. Powers doesn’t want a stereotypical foreign correspondent, but instead a “reporter,” someone who has no preconceived ideologies and who can be objective. Powers wants Jones to use an Englishman, Stephen Fisher (Herbert Marshall), head of the Universal Peace Party, who can help Jones get to a Dutch diplomat named Van Meer (Albert Bassermann), to find out what’s going on in Europe. Powers wants him to use the name Harvey Haverstick which sounds more important. At this point the practical Jones just wants an expense account.

Jones travels by ship to London and meets Stebbins (writer Robert Benchley who contributed dialogue to the screenplay), who is an American journalist who is stationed in England. His character is funny as he complains that he has been drinking alcohol too much and now must drink milk, not the drink of tough newsmen.

Jones sees Van Meer getting into a taxi taking him to Fisher’s dinner in his honor. He gets a ride with Van Meer who dodges questions and then shows he is shrewd because he knows Jones is a reporter. He does admit that he feels helpless about the oncoming possibility of a war, which stresses a tone of pessimism. In contrast, Fisher’s daughter, Carol (Laraine Day), argues with others that people say we stumble into war but never into peace. She implies people can embrace peace just as much as war.

Jones encounters Carol at dinner, not knowing she is Fisher’s daughter, which adds to the humor of the film. His cynical ways about whether Fisher is legit miffs Carol, who says her name is “Smith,” which is a counter to Jones’s generic last name. She will not sit with him even after he sends her thirty notes. Fisher announces that Van Meer can’t attend, which surprises Jones, since the man took him to the affair. Fisher reveals that Carol is his daughter, and Jones looks at her with an adoring stare which throws her off her speech. When she looks for her notes she encounters all the messages that Jones sent, further adding to the unnerving chemistry that is developing between them.

Van Meer went to a peace conference in Holland and Jones receives a message to follow him there. Jones confronts Van Meer as he is entering the building where the gathering is to take place, but Van Meer appears not to recognize Jones. Then a supposed reporter (one of many deceptions in the movie) asks to take Van Meer’s picture but he has a gun next to his camera and shoots Van Meer. The scene shows how appearances can be deceiving as Jones, the true journalist, is contrasted against the phony one. It is raining and Jones chases the shooter through a sea of umbrellas. The umbrellas show how the surface can cover the reality beneath and add to confusion for someone seeking the truth. The killer shoots other as he makes a getaway and has help from a man in a car, suggesting a conspiracy is at work. Jones happens to hop into a car which contains a smiling Carol, happy to see the handsome Jones, and Scott ffolliott (George Sanders), a stereotypical unflappable Britisher, and another journalist. He says the wife of an ancestor who Henry VIII beheaded dropped off the capital letter at the beginning of his name to commemorate her husband (Benchley’s witty dialogue is apparent here). They chase after the car transporting the murderer, who fires shots at them, as the police follow. However, they mysteriously lose the killer in a flat plain near some windmills. The wind causes Jones to lose his hat for the second time (think of the Coesn Brothers film Miller’s Crossing where losing a hat makes one seem unsure and foolish). However, after chasing it he notices that a windmill’s blades reversed their motion, and he suspects that the killer is inside. He sends the other two to retrieve the police.

There is a plane flying by and the smart Jones realizes that the windmill is signaling the plane to land. He goes inside and hears men speaking a foreign language. Those from the plane join them as Jones hides on stairs leading toward the top. He discovers the real Van Meer, who is alive but drugged. He tries to stay coherent, saying that there was an attempt to make it look like he was assassinated by using a double. He becomes mute after scribbling something on a piece of paper. Again, we have appearances being deceiving, as represented by Van Meer’s double and the fake assassination. Hitchcock builds suspense by having Jones’s raincoat getting caught in the mill’s mechanism. But he removes it and grasps it before it can be discovered. In addition, Van Meer looks upward, possibly revealing Jones. Instead, he hides, and the foreigners only see a bird and light coming in from a window. Outside of the latter, Jones holds on, trying to prevent a fall, and escapes. (Light becomes a metaphor in the story, especially at the end).

Later, Jones tries to explain what he has observed to the authorities. They go to the windmill and everyone and the car are gone. There is a man sleeping where Jones found Van Meer and he says he has been sleeping there all day and there were no others. We have here a further example of deceptive appearances, and an attempt to discredit Jones. The police and even Carol doubt his story. Hitchcock often has a truthful man being doubted by others, and he again exhibits his distrust of the police.

Jones is quite observant as he notices that the wires to his hotel room have been cut when two men pretending to be policemen say they need to take him to headquarters. He is cool and funny under pressure when one of the men says they all speak English. Jones says not everybody where he comes from can make that claim, obviously referring to some uneducated Americans. He realizes that he knows too much, and these conspirators are out to get rid of him. He pretends to take a bath and goes out the window to Carol’s room. As he goes along the edge of the building he touches a light that extinguishes which leave a sign that says “Hot … Europe,” a reference to the Nazi threat. She is there trying to get support for her father’s peace movement, and she does not believe his story after what happened at the windmill. Jones continues to be the honest man who others do not believe. He is a true journalist because he says, “There’s something fishy going on around here. There’s a big story in this. I can smell it. I can feel it and I’m going to get to the bottom of it if it’s the last thing I do. And nothing’s going to stop me.”

He persists and wins Carol over. He is shrewd again as he asks for several people to go to his hotel room for assistance as a diversion as a valet gets his clothes. Jones and Carol escape and head for a ship. The humor continues as they both profess their love for each other and the desire to marry. With a wink to the audience Jones says, “Well that cuts our love scene quite short.”

In London, Jones meets Fisher and Krug (Eduardo Ciannelli), and recounts that he saw Van Meer killed, but does not mention the double because he recognizes Krug as one of the men at the windmill. When Krug leaves the room, he tells Fisher what he knows. Fisher talks privately with Krug, and we realize that Fisher is one of the conspirators. Krug leaves and Jones is upset by this act and says he wants to spill the story now. Fisher convinces him to keep his story quiet so as not to endanger Van Meer. He also says Jones can have a private eye to protect him since he is in danger. The man they will use is really an assassin. We have more deception as people who seem friendly are deadly. Fisher almost seems admiring when he describes how the supposed enemy is quite cunning, since he is really talking about himself. However, he almost hesitates to go forward with the plan, since he sees how attached his daughter is to Jones.

Rowley (Edmund Gwenn) is the private eye who is supposed to protect Jones, but pushes him in front of a truck. Jones is not hit, and Rowley covers by saying it was safer to push than to pull. Pretending (deceit again) that they are being followed, Rowley gets a reluctant Jones to go into a church and up to the top of the tower. He tries to push him off. We see a man fall to his death, but there is a delay which heightens the tension until we learn that Jones stepped aside, and it was Rowley that fell. (Hitchcock will kill off a lead character quickly in Psycho, but not here. He also likes cliffhangers as he has falling from heights, for example, in North by Northwest, Saboteur, and Vertigo).

Because it was Fisher who hooked Jones up with Rowley, Jones now knows Fisher isn’t the upstanding man he pretends to be. ffolliott shows up at Stebbins’s office and says he suspected Fisher because of his own investigating. He says that there was some memorized section of a peace initiative that the real kidnappers are trying to extract from Van Meer. He suggests that Jones and Carol hide under the guise of protecting Jones, but ffolliott will say that Carol was kidnapped, as a way to invent leverage over Fisher (false fronts erected all around). Even ffolliott schemes involving his allies as he called Carol earlier to suggest hiding (and he doesn’t tell her about her father), and ffolliott does not tell Jones of the ploy. Everybody here twists the truth.

Carol hears Jones setting up a separate room at a hotel for her to keep her away longer so ffolliott can contact Fisher. She leaves for home when she discovers Jones’s secret scheme and believes he is just using her to get at her father, and spoils ffolliott’s attempt to get Van Meer’s whereabouts. ffolliott follows Fisher after hearing him say the address to a cab driver and tells Stebbins to bring Jones later. He is hoping to discover where Van Meer is. Carol answers the phone and recognizes Kruger’s voice, which make her wonder why that man is calling her father.

ffolliott is caught at the place where they are keeping Van Meer just as Fisher pretends he is still Van Meer’s friend to get the clause of the treaty out of him. The journalist says that Fisher is not his friend, and it is enough for the drugged Van Meer to realize the deception since there are no police to help him. He says there is “no help for the whole poor, suffering world.” Van Meer’s assessment is an accurate prediction of the Nazi onslaught that will follow.

The captors off screen torture Van Meer and he starts to divulge the information. Ffolliott breaks the window, and unlike Rowley, his fall is broken by an awning. However, the bad guys escape as Jones arrives. Van Meer is unconscious and not able to corroborate ffolliott’s story. Thus, Scotland Yard is reluctant to pursue Fisher due to his respected, but false, position. As the conspirators head for the United States, England declares war on Germany.

Carol is on the plane with her father and reveals her knowledge of Fisher’s connection to Kruger. He confesses his deception as a spy for Germany. He feels ashamed now for what he has done. Jones and ffolliott are also on the plane. Carol is still devoted to her father even as Jones says he didn’t come to take down her father, it was only where the story led.

At that moment a German ship shells the plane, mistakenly thinking it’s a bomber. The fog of war is taking hold. Now even the pilots lie to prevent panic, saying that it was target practice and the firing is an accident. Luckily, Carol distributes life vests, realizing lies will not protect anyone. The plane goes into the ocean and Fisher sacrifices himself so others can stay afloat on a wing, gaining some redemption for himself.

An American ship rescues the remaining main characters. Jones does not want to soil Fisher’s name because of his love for Carol. She grants him leave because, as Rick from Casablanca says, their story isn’t that important compared to the rest of the world. The captain of the ship says no information should be released while onboard. Here, Jones uses deception to get the truth out by pretending to talk to his “uncle” while letting the phone stay off the hook as he details the story to his boss, Powers, by arguing for its release to the captain.

The once reluctant foreign correspondent now reports the war from various places in Europe in the epilogue to the story. His broadcast speech over the radio at the end is an argument against isolationism as he reports while bombs rain from the sky. He tells listeners in the United States to rally against the darkness of fascism that is coming when he says it’s, “as if the lights were all out everywhere except in America. Keep those lights burning … they’re the only lights left in the world.” It is a plea for truth to combat lies, which has become an ongoing battle.

The next film is Badlands.