foreign correspondent (alfred hitchcock, 1940)

Good-not-great Hitchcock, with a few outstanding set pieces and a reasonable plot to keep our attention between the good stuff. It's all quite entertaining, and after all, what more do you want? This isn't the Vertigo kind of Hitchcock with lots of bizarre subtext ... the story of Europe just as war breaks out is straightforward. Joel McCrea is always good, and the supporting cast is impressive (Laraine Day, Herbert Marshall, George Sanders, Robert Benchley, Edmund Gwenn). Hitchcock manages to make us think "how did he do that?" on a regular basis, which in itself is part of the entertainment. Score by Alfred Newman, and special effects by Paul Eagler and the great William Cameron Menzies, who apparently had a lot to do with the final picture.