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Foreign Correspondent
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OverviewAI-generated
*Foreign Correspondent* is a 1940 American black-and-white film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The screenplay was written by James Hilton, Ben Hecht, Charles Bennett, and Joan Harrison, with production handled by Walter Wanger. The cast includes George Sanders, Joel McCrea, Laraine Day, and Herbert Marshall. Alfred Newman composed the music, while Rudolph Maté served as director of photography and Dorothy Spencer as film editor. The narrative is set in England and the Netherlands.
The film has a runtime of 115 or 120 minutes and was distributed by United Artists and Netflix. It is categorized as a spy, crime, film noir, and mystery film. *Foreign Correspondent* received nominations for the Academy Award for Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Writing, Original Screenplay. It also received the National Board of Review: Top Ten Films award. The work has been rated 7.4 on IMDb and 7 on TMDb.
Synthesized by Vinony from 40 facts across 4 sources: Wikidata, TMDb, IMDb, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.
Film · TMDB
7.0American crime reporter John Jones is reassigned to Europe as a foreign correspondent to cover the imminent war. When he walks into the middle of an assassination and stumbles on a spy ring, he seeks help from a beautiful politician’s daughter and an urbane English journalist to uncover the truth.
Cast
- Joel McCrea as John Jones
- Laraine Day as Carol Fisher
- Herbert Marshall as Stephen Fisher
- George Sanders as Scott ffolliott
- Albert Bassermann as Van Meer
- Robert Benchley as Stebbins
Themes
- diplomat
- assassination
- chase
- parent child relationship
- world war ii
- windmill
- conspiracy
- reporter
- black and white
- crash
This product uses the TMDB API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDB.
Key facts
- Directed by
- Alfred Hitchcock
- Written by
- James Hilton (dialogue) Robert Benchley (dialogue)
- Screenplay by
- Charles Bennett Joan Harrison
- Produced by
- Walter Wanger
- Starring
- Joel McCrea Laraine Day Herbert Marshall George Sanders Albert Bassermann Robert Benchley
- Cinematography
- Rudolph Maté , A.S.C.
- Edited by
- Dorothy Spencer
- Music by
- Alfred Newman
- Production company
- Walter Wanger Productions
- Distributed by
- United Artists
- Release date
- August 16, 1940 ( 1940-08-16 ) (U.S.)
- Running time
- 120 minutes
- Country
- United States
- Language
- English
- Budget
- $1,484,167
- Box office
- $1,598,435
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- film
- Country of origin
- United States
- Original language
- English language
- Director
- Alfred Hitchcock
- Screenwriter
- Alfred Hitchcock
- Cast member
- Leonard Mudie
- Composer
- Alfred Newman
- Producer
- Walter Wanger
- Cinematographer
- Rudolph Maté
- Narrative location
- Netherlands
- Duration
- 115
- FilmAffinity ID
- 945012
- Distribution format
- video on demand
- Image
- Foreign Correspondent trailer 16 McCrea crop.jpg
Show 10 more facts
- Commons category
- Foreign Correspondent (film)
- publication date
- 1940-08-16
- film editor
- Dorothy Spencer
- title
- Foreign Correspondent
- distributed by
- Netflix
- production designer
- Alexander Golitzen
- color
- black-and-white
- assessment
- Bechdel test
- review score
- 96%
- capital cost
- 1484167
Sources (12)
via Wikidata · CC0
~15 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Foreign Correspondent is a 1940 American black-and-white spy thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. It tells the story of an American reporter based in Britain who tries to expose enemy spies involved in a fictional continent-wide conspiracy in the prelude to World War II. It stars Joel McCrea and features 19-year-old Laraine Day, Herbert Marshall, George Sanders, Albert Bassermann, and Robert Benchley, along with Edmund Gwenn.
Foreign Correspondent was Hitchcock's second Hollywood production after leaving the United Kingdom in 1939 (the first was Rebecca) and had an unusually large number of writers: Robert Benchley, Charles Bennett, Harold Clurman, Joan Harrison, Ben Hecht, James Hilton, John Howard Lawson, John Lee Mahin, Richard Maibaum, and Budd Schulberg, with Bennett, Harrison, Hilton and Benchley the only writers credited in the finished film. It was based on Vincent Sheean's political memoir Personal History (1935), the rights to which were purchased by producer Walter Wanger for $10,000.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Foreign Correspondent” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.