Rent Foreign Correspondent (1940)

Correspondent Course - Foreign Correspondent review by griggs

Not the Hitchcock you’d put in the top drawer, but Foreign Correspondent hums along with the confidence of a man who knew where every screw went. McCrea’s American hack gets shipped off to pre-war Europe to find a story and soon finds several, most of them inconvenient. The set pieces are crisp, the pacing rarely flags, and the whole thing has more bounce than a wartime espionage picture strictly needs — the same bounce Hitchcock found in The 39 Steps. Almost.

The weak spot is the centre. McCrea and Laraine Day are fine apart but never quite ignite. You accept the romance because the plot demands it, not because they sell it.

What gives it bite, apart from that windmill sequence, is George Sanders and Herbert Marshall: precise, unhurried, playing every scene like they’ve already read the script. When they’re together, you’d believe anything either of them told you. Which, given the plot, is rather the point.

Typical Hitch - Foreign Correspondent review by NO

Slow to start but gathers pace. Many scenes were later copied & became cliches .I liked the plane crash-well done & although it was propaganda at the end,it was

throughly enjoyable.

Pardon me gentlemen, I represent the Jupiter Life Assurance, could I interest you in a small policy - Foreign Correspondent review by LJ

This spy thriller starts off slow but more than makes up for it with multiple exciting set pieces later on. However it is odd that Joel McCrea drops out of the story at one point and George Sanders takes over as the hero. It made me realise I would rather watch Sanders.