FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 1998 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): ***
A Dutchman named Van Meer is about to speak at a key peace conference just before the outbreak of World War II. As the addled or drugged Van Meer, Albert Bassermann gives an aptly mysterious performance.
When Van Meer vanishes after just his arrival, Carol Fisher, the daughter of conference organizer Stephen Fisher, steps in and delivers a
big hearted but vacuous talk in his place. As the innocent Carol, Laraine Day uses her pixyish and wide-eyed good looks to charm the conference attendees, especially a newly arrived foreign correspondent named Johnny Jones. Johnny thinks she is just about the best thing he has ever seen.
Joel McCrea with his malleable everyman face plays Johnny in 1940's
FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT by Alfred Hitchcock. You can almost feel the great master sculpting McCrea's face to fit the story.
Although the two leads' love story is secondary, the chemistry between the them is genuine and makes for an interesting little side plot.
When someone looking like Van Meer later appears, he is shot. Hitchcock, ever the master at the staging of a thriller, films the killer's escape with the camera high above the crowd. In the heavy rain
the umbrellas rustle swiftly in a clear rhythm as the killer runs unseen
through them. You can feel the tension without seeing it or even witnessing the looks on the faces of the crowd.
(So when does Hitchcock appear in the movie? 13 minutes into the picture he is shown clearly walking down the street reading a newspaper.)
Using Hitchcock's favorite theme of one man against a multitude, the correspondent bravely holes up in a windmill to keep an eye on a host of bad guys -- Dutch and German. As Johnny tries hard not to be discovered, he gets his coat caught in the spokes of the windmill. As we all grimace, his arm is about to be chopped off when he pulls it out of his coat just in the nick of time. With a huge collective sigh of relief we realize that our hero is saved and has not been detected afterall.
Hitchcock doesn't need to show violence to frighten. One horrific scene happens off camera, but the accompanying screams and the fear in our hero's eyes make the scene's terror palpable.
Although made in a time when special effects did not so dominate movies as they do today, the film ends in a dramatic and fairly realistic disaster. The picture is not the best of Hitchcock's body of work, but it is quite a well done film and well worth looking for.
FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT runs 2:00. It is not rated but would be PG for violence and adult themes and would be fine for kids around ten and up.
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