Directed by Alfred Hitchcock • 1940 • United States
Starring Joel McCrea, Laraine Day, Herbert Marshall
In 1940, Alfred Hitchcock made his official transition from the British film industry to Hollywood. And it was quite a year: his first two American movies, REBECCA and FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT, were both nominated for the best picture Oscar. Though REBECCA prevailed, FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT is the more quintessential Hitch film. A full-throttle espionage thriller, starring Joel McCrea as a green Yank reporter sent to Europe to get the scoop on the imminent war, it’s wall-to-wall witty repartee, head-spinning plot twists, and brilliantly mounted suspense set pieces, including an ocean plane crash climax with astonishing special effects. FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT deserves to be mentioned alongside THE 39 STEPS and NORTH BY NORTHWEST as one of the master’s greatest adventures.
Up Next in The Good War Revisited
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Rome Open City
Directed by Roberto Rossellini • 1945 • Italy
Starring Aldo Fabrizi, Anna Magnani, Marcello PaglieroThis was Roberto Rossellini’s revelation, a harrowing drama about the Nazi occupation of Rome and the brave few who struggled against it. Though told with more melodramatic flair than the films t...
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No Regrets for Our Youth
Directed by Akira Kurosawa • 1946 • Japan
In Akira Kurosawa's first film after the end of World War II, future beloved Ozu regular Setsuko Hara gives an astonishing performance as Yukie, the only female protagonist in Kurosawa's body of work and one of his strongest heroes. Transforming hersel...
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Night and Fog
Directed by Alain Resnais • 1955 • France
Ten years after the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps, filmmaker Alain Resnais documented the abandoned grounds of Auschwitz and Majdanek in NIGHT AND FOG (NUIT ET BROUILLARD), one of the first cinematic reflections on the Holocaust. Juxtaposing...
