Rebecca was the first American production for English director Alfred Hitchcock. It would turn out to be one of his best films, and the only one to win an Academy Award for Best Picture. He was also nominated for Best Director, but lost. In fact, the only Oscar he would ever win would be for lifetime achievement, in 1968.
Among the nominees that lost to Rebecca was Hitchcock's other film from that year, Foreign Correspondent. Foreign Correspondent was nominated for six Oscars, while Rebecca was nominated for another eleven. That's seventeen Oscar nominations for Hitchcock directed films, from 1941 alone!
The story for Foreign Correspondent had been under development for several years by producer Walter Wanger. Originally, it was to take place during the Spanish Civil War, but that ended too soon. Wanger insisted that the film be politically up to date, requiring constant rewriting during production. Eventually, fourteen different writers were used.
Foreign Correspondent is similar to many subsequent Hitchcock films (e.g. Saboteur, The Man who Knew Too Much, North by Northwest) with its story mixing espionage, patriotism, and romance. As in those other films, the hero is an amateur who comes through after much travail.
American newspaper magnate Powers (Harry Davenport) is annoyed that his European correspondents are only sending vague, useless reports. He decides to send troublemaking crime reporter Johnny Jones (Joel McCrae) to Europe, in the hopes that he will stir up some breaking news.
But once there, Jones seems more interested in romancing Carol Fisher (Laraine Day), the attractive daughter of acclaimed peacemaker Stephen Fisher (Herbert Marshall). He also meets his hard-drinking contemporary, Stebbins (Robert Benchley), and debonair British writer Scott ffolliott (George Sanders).
The action begins when Van Meer (Albert Basserman) is kidnapped. Jones trails the culprits to a windmill in the Dutch countryside, teeming with enemy (assumedly Nazi) spies. Soon these agents are after Jones, especially chipper Rowley (Edmund Gwenn) and creepy Krug (Eduardo Ciannelli). Jones and Scott perform heroics to free Van Meer and arrest the spies. This results in a spectacular plane crash and rescue in the Atlantic Ocean.
Robert Benchley was a beloved and much respected humorist, author and comic actor. For his small role in Foreign Correspondent, he wrote his own lines. "Jaws" author Peter Benchley is Robert's grandson.
Albert Basserman was a German actor who fled the Nazi regime, eventually ending up in America. He did not speak English, and had to learn all his lines phonetically. This handicap did not prevent him from getting supporting roles in Hollywood, appearing in six films from 1940 alone. He received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his work in Foreign Correspondent.
The film also was nominated for Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay (Charles Bennett, Joan Harrison), Best B&W Cinematography (Rudolph Mate), and for its sets and special effects.
I don't feel that Foreign Correspondent is a great film. One problem is the romance between McCrae and Day. I can accept that they've both remained unattached all this time. I can understand why McCrae is so interested in lovely, educated, innocent Day.
What seems more difficult to believe is that she would fall for him so quickly, especially given his curious and embarrassing behavior. After declaring their mutual love, the Hollywood production code still assures her chastity. Even separate but adjoining rooms are too scandalous for her, so much so that she promptly abandons her campaign of hiding him from the bad guys.
The ruthless Nazi agents wait until end of the movie to torture poor Van Meer. If they had simply done this upon kidnapping him, they would have saved themselves a great deal of trouble.
After the plane crashes into the ocean, six people out of all the passengers manage to get out. Four of them, predictably, are the film's leads. There are too many coincidences, such as Sanders or Day constantly showing up at all the right times. Finally, much of the suspense doesn't come off. For example, we know that Rowley will not succeed in killing McCrae, because the subplot occurs too early in the film.
Still, Foreign Correspondent is full of action, and its sets (especially the windmill, full of gears and wheels) and special effects (the plane crash) are very good. (61/100)
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