FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT

US, 1940, 119 minutes, Black and white.
Joel Mc Crea, Laraine Day, Herbert Marshall, George Sanders, Robert Benchley, Edmund Gwenn, Eduardo Ciannelli, Albert Basserman.
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

Foreign Correspondent is Alfred Hitchcock making espionage films at the beginning of the war. It was said that Goebel's even enjoyed Foreign Correspondent. The film looks like some of Hitchcock's film made in England in the 30s like Secret Agent. This is the espionage background which Hitchcock was to enjoy right through the 40s and 50s and into the 60s. It also takes up his themes of mistaken identity. The serious-minded hero played by Joel Mc Crea does not realise that the villain is the very suave presence of Herbert Marshall. Laraine Day is the conventional heroine. There are many famous effects which are discussed at length in books about Hitchcock e.g. the murder in the rain and the mysterious windmill. There is also the famous sequence of the crash and the camera going into the water with the plane. The film seems somewhat dated now but is certainly a very good example of Hitchcock's film making and entertainment.

1. Audience expectations of a Hitchcock film? Their qualities and strengths?

2. This film as one from 1940? Does it show its age? Cinema techniques, story, propaganda? How successful despite any limitations here?

3. How plausible was the plot? How enjoyable within the limits of thriller conventions? Which conventions did it use and how well?

4. Johnny Jones as hero? The ordinary man, the newspaper man and the opening of the film, the bystander towards the European war, becoming involved? The significance of his being American and American in style? Involvement in the war, heroism? Relentless seeking of the truth? His likeable character and easy going nature as hero? The achievement by the end?

5. The films presentation of the reasons for his involvement, the consequences of a bystander's involvement?

6. How well communicated were the intricacies of the plot? What techniques did Hitchcock use to retain audience interest? Suspense?

7. The role of deaths in the film? The assassination in the rain, the visual effect with the umbrellas and the escape? The weapon in the camera? Roly and his attempt to kill the hero in Westminster Tower? Roly's own death? The final deaths in the plane crash and the floating raft?

8. what kind of man was Stephen Fischer? The suave Englishman, seeming the hero, the truth about him, his sinister activities, his ideology and belief in it, attitude towards his daughter, the significance of his death? How plausible and convincing a villain?

9. The complications of Carol being his daughter? Her political attitudes and the difference with her father? Her falling in love with Johnny Jones? Her father dying for her?

10. The contribution of the minor characters, for instance Folliot? Roly? Newspaper people? Spies? The people at the Windmill? The professor?

11. The use of Holland for the film's setting, the importance of the windmills, the wind and the reversal of the sails of the windmill? The car vanishing? The atmosphere of the interior of the windmill and its mystery? Johnny Jones climbing around? The presence of heroes and villains in the windmill?

12. The importance of the climax and the resolution of the plot? The revelation of Fischer's guilt? The need for action by Jones?

13. The suspense with the plane. the crash, the cinema techniques of the effect of the crash and water flooding the cockpit?

14. The people floating on the raft, their personalities, survival, Fischer's death?

15. The propaganda overtones of the ending? How appropriate? The film was budgeted as a 'B' picture. The quality of the film as a 'B' picture?