Foreign Correspondent
Introduction by film critic Jordan Hoffman on Thursday, May 29.
When Hitchcock's Rebecca won Best Picture in ’41, he also had another film in contention: Foreign Correspondent. Expertly paced, it finds Hitchcock honing the formula of a breathless chase across multiple locations, even sketching out ideas later to appear in North by Northwest.
The impulsive slugging of a cop by reporter John Jones (Joel McCrea) gets the attention of his editor, who seeks a scribe to cover Europe’s unstable situation without the biased tone of a foreign correspondent. Things get sinister when Jones’ first interview subject, a Dutch diplomat, is assassinated in a spectacularly Hitchcockian sequence involving a gazillion umbrellas. From there, Jones is embroiled in a deadly plot to undermine the stability of the Western world.
A flawless example of a classic Hollywood thriller with perfect balance between comedy, tension and visual ingenuity. The film is also a harbinger of things to come from the director, who also dabbled in war-themed shorts and chronicled WWII’s evolution in Saboteur and Lifeboat, followed by a perverse look at its aftermath in Notorious.
Introduction by film critic Jordan Hoffman on Thursday, May 29.
When Hitchcock's Rebecca won Best Picture in ’41, he also had another film in contention: Foreign Correspondent. Expertly paced, it finds Hitchcock honing the formula of a breathless chase across multiple locations, even sketching out ideas later to appear in North by Northwest.
The impulsive slugging of a cop by reporter John Jones (Joel McCrea) gets the attention of his editor, who seeks a scribe to cover Europe’s unstable situation without the biased tone of a foreign correspondent. Things get sinister when Jones’ first interview subject, a Dutch diplomat, is assassinated in a spectacularly Hitchcockian sequence involving a gazillion umbrellas. From there, Jones is embroiled in a deadly plot to undermine the stability of the Western world.
A flawless example of a classic Hollywood thriller with perfect balance between comedy, tension and visual ingenuity. The film is also a harbinger of things to come from the director, who also dabbled in war-themed shorts and chronicled WWII’s evolution in Saboteur and Lifeboat, followed by a perverse look at its aftermath in Notorious.
