"Foreign Correspondent" — A "Masterpiece of Propaganda"

Johnny Jones (Joel McCrea) evades the Germans, er, the Borovians, by escaping through a window in the windmill where he's trapped.

Walter Wanger, the independent producer behind Foreign Correspondent (1940), got his first taste of the power of film during World War I when he handled publicity for the American embassy in Rome. Later, he said,

"Believing in motion pictures as an international force, I really wanted to see our work become a respected calling. I thought it was almost as important as the State Department."

Though he was usually forced for economic reasons to produce more lighthearted fare (for instance, he produced the Marx Brothers' The Cocoanuts), that sensibility remained. Nevertheless, there was a literary property on his shelf that, he'd hoped, would satisfy his political urges.

In 1936, he purchased foreign correspondent Vincent Sheean's memoir, Personal History, and burned through a busload of writers and over $140,000 trying to adapt it for the screen, all to no avail. And then he met Alfred Hitchcock.

As mentioned in yesterday's post, Wanger greatly desired that the script be kept as topical as possible to reflect the current developments of the war heating up in Europe. Unbeknown to many, Hitchcock was already generously donating money and creative efforts to counter the German threat; he saw Wanger's project as an opportunity to do even more — and in grandiose Hollywood fashion. He jumped at the chance to work with the producer, tossed out most of the content of the book and eventually renamed the finished product Foreign Correspondent.

There was, however, one snag.

In the 1930s, the United States Congress had signed the American Neutrality Act, intended to keep America from involvement in foreign wars. This reached into Hollywood, whose censors under the Hays Office' Motion Picture Code prevented studios from making films that reflected a non-neutral bias. Still, both Wanger and Hitch had something to say — and they weren't about to let a few bureaucrats stop them from saying it. Like any self-respecting producer/director team, they gleefully set about creating workarounds. As Patrick McGilligan wrote in his 2003 biography, Alfred Hitchcock — A Life in Darkness and Light, "From the outset of the project, the director and his new producer got along like co-conspirators."

Hence, though the Germans were rattling their spears in Europe, the creative team was prohibited from referring directly to the threat. Instead, the villains in the movie were identified as fictitious Borovians, intent (like the Germans) on forcing England into war.

Another example: after his editor had given the reporter Johnny Jones instructions on whom he should interview in Europe, Jones naively suggested Hitler, not as a threat but as a news source. "Don't you think it would be a good idea to pump him? He must have something on his mind." The mere mention of Adolph Hitler linked the movie to real-life events.

And that brings us to the picture above. Hitchcock planted an image of Hitler's profile into this shot of Jones climbing out of the window of a windmill outside Amsterdam. Look in the upper right corner and you'll see the Fuhrer's famous slicked-down hair, eyebrows and mustache.

Now let's return to the ending scene of the movie. Jones and his bride, Carol (Laraine Day), were in a radio sound booth, reporting on the bombs falling on London. Though the lights suddenly went out, miraculously, power remained to operate the radio equipment. And it's then that Jones said:

"It's too late to do anything here now except stand in the dark and let them come... as if the lights were all out everywhere, except in America. Keep those lights burning, cover them with steel, ring them with guns, build a canopy of battleships and bombing planes around them. Hello, America, hang on to your lights: they're the only lights left in the world."

On paper, those lines seem innocuous enough, but on screen, as strains of The Star-Spangled Banner welled to a crescendo, the message was clear: America was the light to the world and was being called on to defend England and battle the darkness overtaking Europe. The emotional effect is powerful. As one who is relatively politically inactive, it definitely gets my heart pounding. As Mark Glancy wrote in his 1999 book, When Hollywood Loved Britain: The Hollywood 'British' Film 1939-1945,

"The emotional impact is overwhelming and it is not at all neutral. Indeed, it can be taken as a subtle, filmic representation of Winston Churchill's widely quoted words that 'in God's good time,' the New World, 'with all its power and might,' would step forth to rescue the old"

— words spoken only weeks before the scene was filmed.

Despite the censors breathing down their necks, Hitchcock and Wanger managed to pull off a military-evangelism coup. The film was successful both commercially and as a propaganda piece, and that is powerful combination — after all how effective would propaganda be, without an audience to receive it? Furthermore, audiences got the coded message. The connection was so obvious that they were unaware that the film was not about the Germans. None other than Nazi Germany's minister of propaganda Joseph Goebbels declared it "a masterpiece of propaganda."

As such, Foreign Correspondent can be a bit confounding for Hitchcock fans who see his films as morally relative, implicitly neutral, playing both sides of the fence. Wasn't this type of movie rather uncharacteristic of Hitchcock? Hmmm. Let me give some thought to this and get back to you in my next post.

The Real-Life Heroes Behind “Foreign Correspondent”

As a reporter, how far would you go to get your story? Lie? Cheat? Walk into a spray of bullets? Alfred Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent (1940) addresses those questions. If you haven’t seen it, you’re in for a fun ride in the tradition of The 39 Steps and North by Northwest.

Dubbed “The Best Spy Thriller of All Time” by American Cinematographer magazine in 1995, this movie follows the trajectory of a young reporter, Johnny Jones (Joel McCrea), as he matures to express his patriotism as a news correspondent. Extremely loosely based on the memoirs of World War I reporter Vincent Sheean (1899 - 1975) (among other changes, the setting was updated to take place during World War II, then building up steam in Europe), the movie is a tribute to war reporters of the time. Says its prologue:

"To those intrepid ones who went across the seas to be the eyes and ears of America. To those forthright ones who early saw the clouds of war while many of us at home were seeing rainbows. To those clearheaded ones who now stand like recording angels among the dead and dying. To those foreign correspondents this motion picture is dedicated."

Vincent Sheean

While Sheean’s exploits are all but omitted from the movie, one name does come up in a conversation between Jones and his editor, Mr. Powers (Harry Davenport), who suggests that he go to Europe and cover the impending war “in the tradition of Richard Harding Davis,” “one of our greatest war correspondents forty years ago.”

Richard Harding Davis (left)

The original man on the street, Davis (1864 - 1916) traveled to exotic locales to cover the news and bring stories in from faraway places. Sheean himself followed in that tradition, writing,

“I had not been sent to China to write about politics or the Chinese Revolution, but to engage in some kind of personal enterprise, capers or high jinks, that would carry on the tradition of romantic adventure (the "Richard Harding Davis tradition", it was called) to which my various employers insisted on assigning me.”

Likewise, Johnny Jones (under the pseudonym “Huntley Haverstock”) was tasked to cover the European scene from the street level. Says Powers, “I don't want any more economists, sages, or oracles bombinating over our cables. I want a reporter!”

Initially, Jones, Like Davis, simply wanted to get a good story. But as the movie progressed, he abandoned that old school romantic adventure writing. Before long, he saw that he was reporting on important events and that real lives were involved. The stakes were political and, increasingly, so became his motives. He began to resemble no one more than the great Edward R. Murrow (1908 - 1965).

Edward R. Murrow at the end of World War II.

Murrow’s first taste of fame occurred when he reported on Hitler’s march into Vienna on March 13, 1938, on CBS’ first broadcast of its still-running “News Roundup.” Revolutionary at the time, the Roundup was a rapid-fire succession of live news reports from such places as Paris, Berlin and Washington D. C. But Murrow was in the catbird seat for that first airing. Assigned to Vienna, he delivered a live, eyewitness report of Hitler’s annexation of Austria. With that, modern broadcast journalism was born. So was Murrow’s celebrity.

Interesting background for sure. But Hitch liked using current topics and events in his movies for the frisson of immediacy they provided, and in the movie's producer, Walter Wanger, he found a kindred spirit. That’s why he updated the setting and gave special attention to that new breed of reporters “who went across the seas to be the eyes and ears of America.” Wanger went so far as to keep Hitch up-to-date on overseas news so that the movie would be as timely as possible upon its release. With events in Europe happening quickly in 1939, that meant the script was constantly taking revisions right up until the last possible moment.

They had been watching events so closely that, thanks to changes pushed through by Wanger, Foreign Correspondent accurately predicted the German bombardment of Britain.* Quoted below is the final scene, filmed on July 5, 1940. Jones is delivering a radio broadcast from London as bombs drop about him:

"Hello America, I have been watching part of the world be blown to pieces ... I've seen things that make the history of the savages read like Pollyanna legends.... [Overheard: the noise of bombs dropping and the broadcast booth goes dark.] I can't read the rest of this speech I had because the lights have gone out. I'll just have to talk off the cuff. All that noise you hear is not static. It's death coming to London. Yes, they're coming here now. You can hear the bombs falling on the streets and the homes. Don't tune me out. Hang on awhile. This is a big story and you're a part of it ... It's too late to do anything here now except stand in the dark and let them come. It's as if the lights were all out everywhere except in America. Keep those lights burning! ... Hello America. Hang onto your lights. You're the only lights left in the world."

Five days later, the first German bombs began to fall on Britain. The film was released on August 27 and as it continued its run, it had the shocking immediacy of a newsreel.

"All that noise you hear is not static. It's death coming to London."

Summing up Murrow’s role in covering those dark days in London, writers have all but recalled that final scene in the film:

"You burned the city of London in our houses and we felt the flames that burned it.”— Archibald Macleish, 1941.

"[Murrow] seemed to experience life with a special intensity and empathy, and he could capture those qualities in his reports. . . . Murrow was among the first to use ambient sound in radio journalism, and he also called more vivid attention to the plight of Londoners, as well as to himself."— Nicolas Lemann, The New Yorker, January 23, 2006.

There is little doubt that Johnny Jones’ combination of eyewitness reportage, unabashed patriotism and showmanship would have called to the minds of 1940 audiences Murrow's on-the-scene dispatches. As Patrick McGilligan wrote in his biography Alfred Hitchcock — A Life in Darkness and Light,

"The blitz attacks... made the ending especially prescient — a "flash forward," with McCrea's radio address eerily presaging Edward R. Murrow's famous broadcasts from a blacked-out London."

Some feel that Jones' broadcast is rather tacked on and doesn't fit the flow of the rest of the movie. I have to admit they've got a point. As McGilligan noted from this interview with the director:

"It was a speech 'out of key with your kind of picture,' Peter Bogdanovich told Hitchcock, fishing for confirmation that it was forced upon him by the politically active producer.

"'It's all right,' the director said blandly. 'It worked.'"

Foreign Correspondent is a perfect expression of the adage that all politics is personal. Like Murrow, Jones grew to "experience life with a special intensity and empathy." These qualities make him an attractive character study. Hitchcock’s films are often occupied with living life with full intensity — a pursuit that so often means facing death and pain with equal gusto as embracing pleasure. Looked at in that perspective, this movie is almost a sermon on how to live.

Unlike many propaganda films of the era (but not unusual for Hitch, who directed several such films), Foreign Correspondent has aged quite well. In fact, if the 2006 Good Night and Good Luck's portrayal of Murrow’s televised ass-kicking of Senator Joseph McCarthy is a sock in the eye to corporate journalism of today, Foreign Correspondent is its long-overlooked wake-up call.

*For another example of such prescience in a Hitchcock film, see Notorious, which was written in the early months of 1945 (though released in 1946) and foresaw the advent of atomic weaponry. Unlike Wanger, however, producer David O. Selznick was so skittish about the use of uranium ore as the film's MacGuffin that he sold the film as a package to RKO. That August, the atom bombs fell on Japan and, I imagine, Selznick poured himself a stiff drink.

Hitchcock's Films as Philosophy - The Exciting Conclusion

To Catch a Thief: Set in picturesque Monaco, even the obligatory chase scene, which takes place at a flower market, is beautiful. All the better to seduce audiences while sneaking in deeper philosophical ideas.

This is the fourth and final part of some "thrilling" thoughts I've been posting lately on Alfred Hitchcock, film and philosophy. If you'd like to catch up with the flow, click here:
Part One
Part Two
Part Three

In Alfred Hitchcock’s 1940 war propaganda flick Foreign Correspondent, Johnnie Jones (Joel McCrea) was a simpleminded, rakish beat reporter. But when his editor assigned him to Europe and changed his name to the Ivy League-ish "Huntley Haverstock," the reporter wasted no time living up to his new identity. The conceit that identity is something we own or create for ourselves was blithely undercut by another insight: identity is often foisted upon us. As the movie progressed, his newly-acquired identity became increasingly difficult to bear. As he more fully embodied what that name stood for (an intrepid wartime correspondent) he became more authentically "alive" – though in doing so he put his life at risk.

Hitch continued to ponder the meaning of identity. 15 years after Foreign Correspondent, in To Catch a Thief, the film’s lead character, John Robie (Cary Grant) had a false, this time criminal, identity thrust upon him, which he spent the film trying to shake loose. The truth of the matter was kept ambiguous – at least as far as the audience was concerned – until the mystery was solved toward the end of the movie. Any presumption of his innocence could only be based on mere sympathy for the character and on the star status of Cary Grant.

Who really are John Robie and Cary Grant? To Catch a Thief raises more questions on the subject than it answers.

Four years after that, in North by Northwest, Hitch placed before audiences yet another character with identities inflicted on him against his will. Unlike TCaT, though, the truth about Roger O. Thornhill (again played by Cary Grant) was confirmed at the film’s outset by no less an authority than his own mother, putting the audience at an advantage. Being fully convinced of Thornhill’s "wrong man" status, viewers could watch as he knocked himself out trying to convince others of who he "truly" was.

In NxNW, spymaster Vandamm (James Mason) repeatedly accused Thornhill of giving a theatrical performance – pretending to be ad man Roger Thornhill. Vandamm insisted that he was United States Information Agent George Kaplan. "My name is Roger Thornhill," the ad executive replied. "It’s never been anything else." But that changed rapidly. Shortly thereafter, upon meeting Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint) on the train and now on the run from the law, he tried (and failed) to convince her that he was "Jack Phillips" of "Kingby Electronics." (As Murray Pomerance pointed out in An Eye for Hitchcock, "not just false identities can be laid upon us.... what we might call authentic ones can too.") Afterward, Thornhill stepped into the role of Kaplan, even getting "killed" in a staged gun attack using fake bullets – just like in the movies.

Throughout all of this, though, Thornhill was merely a thin veneer over the actor who portrayed him, Cary Grant, whose constant mugging for the camera reminded audiences of whom they were really watching. (One scene in the hospital even treats us to the Hollywood fan world, when a bobby soxer swoons over Grant!) This house of mirrors-like labyrinth of identities could permutate forever as it works out such questions as, "who am I?" and "at which point to I ‘become’ the roles I take on?" Clearly, name, profession and social status are completely inadequate answers to these kinds of existential questions.

For me, regarding the answer to that second question, the operative word is become. Thornhill learned that accouterments such as a driver’s license, a hotel key, a gray silk suit or even a recognizable face are unreliable identifiers. Instead, action itself is the thing – it was in the act of becoming Kaplan that he found himself. In becoming, he became alive. That’s the lesson that I take from Sartre’s dictum, "As far as men go, it is not what they are that interests me, but what they can become." If that is the case, then its opposite might also be true: to stop becoming is to die.

And that’s what I mean when I suggest that Hitchcock’s films are philosophy.