Foreign Correspondent (1940)

Director:  Alfred Hitchcock    
Cast:  Joel McCrea, Laraine Day, Herbert Marshall, George Sanders, Albert Basserman, Robert Benchley

Alexander Granach has a small role in this film as a valet.

PLOT:  Let me begin by saying that this film's opening credit music is far too cheerful for a film about Nazis, or, for that matter, a Hitchcock film.

Mr. Powers (Harry Davenport), the editor of the New York Morning Globe, wants a decent reporter to cover the "crisis" (understatement) in Europe.  He drafts Johnny Jones (Joel McCrea) as a foreign correspondent.  He gives him the pen name of Huntley Haverstock, claiming that it's a good name for a foreign correspondent (more like a good name for a square British kid).

Huntley arrives in London and meets Stebbins (Robert Benchley) who thankfully decides to call him Jones.  Jones receives a telegram from Powers telling him that it is absolutely crucial that he attend a luncheon that will feature a man named Van Meer (Albert Basserman), a Dutch diplomat.  He, being a crazy old man, ignores Jones' questions, but he does say he feels helpless about the prospect of war.

The luncheon is put on by Stephen Fisher (Herbert Marshall), leader of the Universal Peace Party, and his daughter Carol (Laraine Day), who talks way too much.  She reveals her real name is Smith.  Fisher makes a speech, revealing that Van Meer is not able to attend, but rather, is at a political conference in Amsterdam, which Jones finds suspicious.  While he's listening to Carol speak, Jones becomes smitten.  He embarrasses himself by clapping when no one else does.  What a dunce.

Jones is ordered to head to Amsterdam to cover Van Meer at the press conference that he is attending.  At the conference, Van Meer doesn't seem to remember Jones, being an old man and all.  When a photographer asks for his picture, Van Meer agrees.  When the photographer snaps the camera, he fires a gun, killing Van Meer and initiating a killing spree.  Jones jumps into a getaway car where he is reunited with Carol and meets Scott ffolliott (George Sanders), another reporter (the capital F in his last name was dropped in memory of a deceased ancestor).  This is really the first car chase/car shooting, as the assassin shoots at the good guys from his vehicle.

The good guys lose the getaway car and end up in a windmill farm.  Jones tells Scott and Carol to get the police because he believes that the assassin is in one of the windmills.  Left alone, Jones investigates the windmill.  After finding the assassin, he finds the real Van Meer, who explains that the man shot was a doppelganger.

Jones gets the police to come with him to the mill to catch the assassin, but they have escaped.  Instead, he finds a man who will not identify himself and the assassin's car nowhere in sight.

When he returns to his hotel, two men disguised as policemen ask him to come down to the station for questioning.  Confirming that they are crooks about to kill him, he sneaks into Carol's room.  She doesn't believe him when he says he's in trouble.  He throws a pity party, which eventually gets her to tell him not to leave (if you're new to classic film, this trick always works).

Jones and Carol board a ship back to England.  As usual, there's a romantic scene en route to a destination, as Jones proposes to Carol and she agrees.  At Stephen's home back in London, Jones recognizes one of the men he saw at the windmill.  Fisher orders Jones to keep the story about Van Meer being kidnapped quiet until further notice.  Fisher sends a bodyguard, Rowley (Edmund Gwenn) to protect him.  Rowley pushes Jones in the way of an oncoming truck, trying to kill him, but Jones keeps out of danger.  Rowley's second attempt at murdering Jones comes on the Tower of London.  In an expert plot twist, Jones throws Rowley over the edge, and that's the end of corrupt bodyguards.

Jones and Scott decide that Fisher is a traitor, so they decide to kidnap Carol.  Scott tails Fisher and tells him that Carol is being held hostage and demands to know where Van Meer is being held.  Carol is reunited with her father and learns that she is going back to America the next day.  Fisher and the windmill man interrogate Van Meer, but just as the Dutchman is about to spill the beans, Scott interrupts them.  Van Meer is tortured into telling everything.  Just as that happens, in a wicked cool scene, Scott jumps out a window and Jones enters, but the crooks have escaped.

Scott takes the case to arrest Fisher to Scotland Yard, believing there is enough proof, but is denied.  In the meantime, war is declared on Germany by France and England, so everyone performs the natural human response:  they get on a plane to America.  Fisher mans up and confesses his wrongdoings to Carol.  Jones decides to do the same, but Carol plays the typical annoying female lead who gets mad because she thinks her husband doesn't love her.

The plane is bombed by a German U-boat.  Carol, amazingly (and thankfully), does not play the typical annoying female lead who screams in the face of danger.  Instead, she tells the team what they need to do to stay safe.  The plane makes an emergency landing in the Atlantic Ocean.  The gang gets picked up by an American ship and get taken back to London.  To a captain who is determined to retain American neutrality by not letting Jones print his story, they relate the story while Powers and the New York crew listen in.  The film ends with Jones and Carol doing a radio broadcast in London while the city is being bombed.

REVIEW:  Interesting that this film has nothing to do with Nazis, though they are mentioned.  I absolutely love Jones' ending quote:  "America, hang on to your lights.  They're the only lights left in the world."

I really do not think that this is Hitchcock's best work, though it isn't nearly as terrible as NOTORIOUS.  I found it very good, but not his best.  3 out of 5 stars.  

Trailer.  For Spanish speakers, the full film is available in Spanish on YouTube.