It’s too late to do anything here now except stand in the dark and let them come…

by chuckofish

Another week has zoomed by and I have nothing to report. All is well. Sometime recently I did watch a wonderfully enjoyable movie, Alfred Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent (1940) starring Joel McCrea, Laraine Day, George Sanders, Herbert Marshall and Edmund Gwenn. The action takes place in Europe and England on the eve of WWII as John Jones (McCrea) tries to solve the mystery of a pro-peace diplomat’s murder. The murder scene is brilliantly shot. I particularly liked the aerial shot of John Jones chasing the murderer through the crowd.

Love and adventure ensue. The scenes in which Jones woos the daughter (Laraine Day) of another peace-party diplomat (Herbert Marshall) are light and often funny, but parts of the movie are surprisingly tense, as when Jones has to climb across the rooftops at night or when Edmund Gwenn, an affable hired killer (talk about casting against type!), tries to push Jones out a tower window.

Come to think of it, there is quite a lot of casting against type. Imagine George Sanders as a suave but friendly good guy, rather than his usual suave cad. I kept waiting for him to turn out to be a villain but (spoiler alert) he remained suavely supportive throughout the film. (Sorry for repeating ‘suave’ but no one is more suave than George Sanders.) There wasn’t even the usual competition over the girl.

I don’t want to give too much of the plot away. Suffice it to say that although everyone ends up adrift in a choppy sea,

love and good triumph. Foreign Correspondent is the type of movie they don’t make anymore. If you haven’t seen it, watch it. If you have, watch it again. I would also recommend Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes (1938) starring Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave, which is equally charming and exciting. The supporting cast are fantastic, the script witty and well written and the direction excellent. Nowadays they don’t bother writing good scripts or pay much attention to direction (or so it seems to me) but as long as we can still watch old movies, we’ll be fine.

Have a great weekend!