Fridays With Hitchcock: Suspicion (1941)

Screenplay by Joan Harrison, Alma Reville, and Samson Raphaelson based on the novel “Before The Fact” by Frances Iles.

This is another one of those movies that I know all of the dialogue to (“A passionate hairdresser!”) and could do a one man show, if suddenly required to save mankind from some horrible fate. I don’t really know why I have seen this film so many times, but I suspect it was one of those films from my childhood that was *always* on TV, and also the kind of movie I love... so if my choice was between SUSPICION on one channel and some other movie that always played on TV on another channel, I’d watch SUSPICION again. I identified with the female lead - not because I’m a woman trapped in a man’s body or because Cary Grant is my “Mango” - but because the first time we see her she is reading a book, and books are her life. That was me as a kid. In fact, this was one of many films that had me riding my bike to the library to check out the novel it was based on. As a shy, bookish, boy, I understood what it meant to secretly love someone way out of your league (Debbie Morrow in grade school)... and know that your heart will be broken again and again because they are just out of your league.




Nutshell: Shy, bookish Lina (Joan Fontaine) comes from a wealthy family - her mother and father (Dame May Whitty and Sir Cedric Hardwicke) expect her to die an unwed virgin, she’s approaching thirty and never even been kissed! On a train she meets handsome, charming, lady’s man Johnnie Aysgarth (Cary Grant) who hides from the conductor in her first class compartment... and when caught, asks her if she will pay for the balance of his ticket. Their paths cross a couple more times, with Johnnie always asking her for something... and they begin dating. He sweeps her off her feet - one of the most eligible men in all of England, and he picks *her*! It’s like Cinderella... and although Johnnie is charming, is he a prince? More the male version of a gold digger. Her parents (and just about everyone else) don’t approve of Johnnie, so they elope - getting married at a Justice Of The Peace and honeymooning in Europe. But, did Johnnie only marry her for her money? Though he lives like a millionaire, he has no money of his own - just his good looks. He has spent his life living off wealthy women. He seems to always have some get rich quick scheme that never works... and *he* never works - he is a born freeloader. He bets on horses, embezzles money from relatives who offer him jobs, sells Lina’s family heirlooms, and does all kinds of awful things - but is always funny and charming and the perfect husband.

When Johnnie enters into a scheme with his wealthy college pal Beaky (Nigel Bruce), Lina begins to suspect that Johnnie may be planning to murder his pal for the money... and when Lina’s father dies and she is in line to inherit, she begins to suspect that Johnnie plans to kill *her* for the money. Johnnie befriends a local mystery writer to find untraceable poisons... and Lina *has* been feeling a little strange lately. Has he been giving her a slow-acting poison? Will she call the police and report the man she loves to the police... or die a happily married woman?




Experiment: Though there is that great shot of Cary Grant climbing the staircase with a *glowing* glass of milk (Hitchcock put a light *inside* the glass to call attention to it) and several other cool shots, the film doesn’t have any obvious ground breaking experiments except the “did he or didn’t he” plot which seems rather daring for a movie starring Cary Grant... and the unfilmed ending. I’m going to save the ending discussion for the end of this blog entry - with SPOILER notices all over the place first.

Hitch Appearance: Dropping a letter in the mailbox... which is part of the film’s leitmotif, which we will discuss in a minute.

Great Scenes: The two great screenwriting lessons we can find in SUSPICION are the “did he or didn’t he” scenes of suspicion, and the use of mailing letters as a leitmotif throughout the film.

Unreliable Character:

One of the keys to creating suspicion about a character is to make sure they are unreliable - that we have room to doubt them. Cary Grant is a romantic lead - who would ever believe he *might* be a bad guy? So the story contains scenes that throw his character into question again and again. These are like the Suspicion Scenes we will discuss in a moment, but are more about establishing the untrustworthy character.




The meet-cute has Johnnie hiding from the conductor in her first class car, and when he’s discovered, he asks her for money to pay for the ticket. Not your most dependable person... yet right after he pays off the conductor, she sees his photo in a society magazine. He tracks her down, showing up at her parent’s house on Sunday morning and asking if she will go to church with him. Except he doesn’t take her to church - she takes her on a walk in the country and tries to kiss her. Later, he says he’ll pick her up at 3pm to go out... then calls to cancel. A week goes by and she doesn’t hear from him - on the day of a big party, she gets a telegram saying he will see her at the party. She dresses up - looks hot - and goes to the party... and he’s a no-show. When he finally does show up at the party, he has no invitation and tells the doorman that he’s Lina’s father’s guest. Lina’s father is not happy about this. After one dance, Johnnie “borrows” Lina’s father’s car and takes her on a drive - kissing her in the car. After the make out session, he asks if she will marry him - um, kind of sudden! By having him break rules, be unpredictable and undependable, yet still be suave, charming Cary Grant; we don’t know what to expect from him throughout the movie. He becomes attractive *and* dangerous. The *character* of Johnnie is suspicious!

Suspicion Is Tearing Us Apart:

As promised in the SHADOW OF A DOUBT chapter, this film is a great example of how to maintain suspicion without ever telling us if he did it or not. As I said in that entry, at the heart of every screenplay is the central question. It's what propels the story forward and keeps the audience involved. In a romantic comedy, the central question might be: Will they hook up or not? In a disaster movie it might be: Will they survive, and *who* will survive? The story begins with the introduction of the central question and then keeps us wondering how it will be resolved for the next 100 pages. This question is what keeps the story going - and will not be answered until the end of the movie. It is the fuel that propels the story, and the moment the question is answered, there is no more fuel for the story.

To keep the question “alive” and keep the suspense growing, we need to keep that question in the foreground - and not let the audience forget it. I call this “poking the tiger” - we will forget that a tiger is dangerous if we allow it to fall asleep and the audience to forget it. So we need to keep poking it throughout the story. Which is where suspicion comes in - we need to suspect that Cary Grant is guilty... yet when Lina gets ready to confront him, have a logical explanation for every bit of suspicion she has. But *keep* the suspicions mounting so that we don’t forget what that central question is and *always* wonder if he is guilty of something. Unlike in SHADOW OF A DOUBT, we never know whether Cary Grant’s Johnnie is guilty or innocent until the very end - so we never know whether Lina is in real danger or just has an over-active imagination until the very end. This keeps the suspense simmering throughout the film.

Creating and maintaining suspicion is an important tool in screenwriting, no matter what genre you are working in. Obviously it’s part of many thrillers and mysteries, but it can be used in comedies and romances and dramatic films. Does the guy love the gal in the rom-com or not? Was our hero betrayed by his best friend or not? Is she married or not? Is the protagonist about to lose their job or not? Suspicion is a great tool that we can use in every genre.



Guilty: When they return from their No-Expenses-Spared honeymoon in Europe, Johnnie gets a letter from a friend asking for money... The money he borrowed to finance the honeymoon.
Guilty: When they arrive at their new house, the decorator has the bill in hand and wants to be paid. Johnnie tells him to put it on that nice little table near the door and leave.
Guilty: When Lina asks how Johnnie intends to pay for all of this, he has no answer - he has never had a job in his life, and has no skills. Lina tells him her parents are *not* going to support them... and that’s when her father calls.
Guilty: Johnnie tells her father that he has been offered a job by his cousin Captain Melbeck that will pay the bills.
Innocent: After hanging up, Lina gets angry with Johnnie for lying to her father about the job offer from Captain Melbeck... but Johnnie pulls an envelope from his coat pocket with a letter from Melback (Leo G. Carroll) offering him a job. He was hoping not to have to work for a living, but if he must...



Guilty: Lina’s father is giving them a special wedding gift... Johnnie is hoping for bags of money, but it ends up being a pair of antique chairs. When Lina comes home the next day, the two chairs are missing. Johnnie’s friend Beaky says the odds are 20 to 1 that Johnnie sold them and went to the race track. When she asks, Johnnie hems and haws and then says he sold them to an American for $200. The next day, Lina sees them in a pawn shop window while walking with local mystery writer Isobel Sedbusk (Auriol Lee) - who says she has seen Johnnie at the race track when he was supposed to be at work. Johnnie comes home with gifts for everyone - he’s won $2,000 at the race track on a bet of $200. Lina asks where he got the $200, and forces him to admit he pawned the chairs...
Innocent: But then he produces the receipt for the chairs - he’s bought them back with his winnings. Not exactly innocent, but he’s done the right thing, right?

Guilty: Lina goes to Captain Melbeck to find out how Johnnie can be at the track when he’s supposed to be working, and discovers that Johnnie was fired... because he embezzled $2,000! The exact amount he supposedly won at the race track. Did he really win the money? Melbeck doesn’t want to go to the police, and has given Johnnie a few months to find the money to reap him.
Innocent: When Lina goes to confront him, he breaks the news that her father has died, and comforts her like the perfect husband.



Guilty: Early in the film, Johnnie tells Lina, “A girl like you is going to come into lots of money eventually.” So when Johnnie and Lina go to the reading of the will, Johnnie is sure that Lina will inherit the half of the old man’s money that doesn’t go to his widow. But they end up inheriting the painting of the old man in full military uniform... and Lina will continue to receive her allowance. Johnnie says he doesn’t know what he would do if Lina were to die first... is he plotting to kill her?
Innocent: The great thing about “not knowing what he would do if she died first” is that it’s ominous... but also romantic. You can take it either way.

Guilty: Once again, Lina asks Johnnie why Melbeck fired him... and he answers “We just didn’t get along.”
Innocent: This continues to build throughout the story - getting worse.



Guilty: Johnnie forms a partnership with Beaky to buy some property on a cliff overlooking the ocean and develop it. Johnnie’s plan, Beaky’s $30,000 - after Beaky agrees, he calls Melbeck to say he’ll soon be able to repay that $2,000 he stole. While Johnnie is making that call in the next room, Lina tries to warn Beaky that this may not be a good investment, maybe he shouldn’t trust Johnnie so much... and Johnnie enters and overhears this. He threatens Lina, tells her not to meddle in his business. It’s *obvious* he plans on ripping off Beaky.
Innocent: The next day he apologizes to Lina for losing his temper, and has decided not to go through with the deal.

Guilty: Instead of just calling off the deal, Johnnie insists on taking Beaky out to the cliff-side property the next morning to show him the reason why he no longer wants to do the deal. Beaky says he doesn’t need to see the reason, he trusts Johnnie. This conversation takes place while the three are playing Scrabble, and Lina arranges her letters to form a word - “Murder” - and a couple more letters make it “Murderer”. She has a flash of Johnnie pushing Beaky off the cliff into the sea far, far below.


Guilty: When she wakes up the next morning, Johnnie and Beaky have already left to look at the cliff-side property. She gets in her car and speeds out to stop the murder. But when she gets there, it is too late. No one is there... just tire tracks leading *over* the edge of the cliff! And Johnnie’s footprints. She looks over the cliff, can see no sign of the car. The sea has already washed away the evidence. She races home to confront Johnnie... and finds him *alone* in the living room. No sign of Beaky. He really did kill his friend for $30,000!
Innocent: Until Beaky pops his head up. Alive! He says he *almost* died, when he put the car into reverse and almost drove over the cliff, but Johnnie jumped in and saved his life.. almost killing himself in the process.



Guilty: Johnnie begins reading books by local mystery writer Isobel Sedbusk... why the sudden interest in reading about murder? He was never one to read before...
Guilty: Johnnie wants to go to a dinner party at Isobel’s house because her brother - the London medical examiner - will be present. Huh? Johnnie asks the brother about untraceable poisons... discovers there is one. Cleverly questions him until he finds out more about the poison Is Johnnie planning on poisoning her?
Innocent: Isobel tells Lina that Johnnie has been asking her many questions about crime because he plans on writing a mystery novel. Is this how Johnnie plans to earn a living?



Guilty: Earlier in the film, Beaky quaffs a snifter of brandy and has a seizure. Johnnie does nothing - just stands there watching his friend suffer. He says Beaky knows he shouldn’t drink brandy, has had this reaction before, and he will either live or die - not much they can do to help.
Guilty: Beaky has to go to Paris to return the $30,000, and Johnnie wants to go with him. Beaky says that’s not necessary... so Johnnie insists on going with him to London, then sticking around London to look for a job.
A couple of days later, a pair of Homicide Detectives ring the bell and want to talk to Johnnie. Lina says he’s away, asks what it’s about... Beaky has died in Paris from drinking a snifter of brandy. He was with another Englishman who dared him to drink a full snifter quickly. The Paris police found papers in Beaky’s pocket about the partnership with Johnnie. When will Johnnie return so the police can question him? Lina says he’s in London looking for a job...
Guilty: When the two Detectives leave, she phones Johnnie’s club in London to talk to him... but he checked out the same day as Beaky left for Paris.
Guilty: Lina asks Isobel about the brandy seizure thing, and Isobel says people have used it to murder in the past, in fact, there’s a book about it on her research shelf... but when Isobel looks for it, it isn’t there... then she remembers: She loaned it to Johnnie a few weeks ago.
Innocent: Johnnie comes home, heart-broken over Beaky’s death. He warned him that drinking brandy might kill him. He did not go with Beaky to Paris, instead looked for a job in London... and checked out of his expensive club to stay in a cheaper hotel... he has a reason for everything that makes him look guilty.



Guilty: Hey, but what about that untraceable poison? Johnnie gets a letter from an insurance company... that he hides from Lina. She sneaks over, pulls it out of his coat pocket while he is in the shower, reads it. (Great suspense scene.) It’s about borrowing on *her* life insurance. Says the only way he can get any money from the policy is in the event of her death.
Guilty: That night he brings her the glowing glass of milk...
Innocent: Though I’ve pretty much spoiled the whole movie, I’ll spoil the end in the section called “Unfilmed Ending”...

By having a reason or explanation or excuse for everything that makes Johnnie look guilty, Johnnie is never proven guilty... just stays under that cloud of suspicion. If there was no explanation for any of these things, we would *know* he was guilty and wonder why the heck she didn’t get out of the house NOW! But this way we wonder, as Lina does, if all of this is in her mind. Does she have an over-active imagination? Is this her insecurity at being a homely woman married to a handsome man making her jump to conclusions? Because there is a potentially innocent reason for everything he has done, she sticks with him... and we don’t think she’s stupid for doing that... and the story can continue to ratchet up the tension without reaching a conclusion as to whether he is guilty or not. Johnnie is certainly not innocent of everything - he *is* an embezzler and ex-womanizer and lazy bum pretty-boy... but whether he’s a killer or not, and whether he plans to murder Lina, are unanswered questions that remain unanswered until the end of the film. That “guilty or innocent” question is what drives the story, so we don’t want it to be answered until the very end.

Leitmotif: A "leitmotif" is a recurring theme, phrase or image associated with a person, situation, or idea. Robert McKee calls them "image systems", but they aren’t always images. Whatever term you use, it's an additional thread connecting pieces of the story, and often a way to explore theme through recurring images. Instead of arbitrarily forcing a leitmotif on your script, you should grow one naturally from the plot and characters. In SUSPICION the leitmotif is letters... not the kind Vanna White turns on Wheel Of Fortune, but those things people wrote on paper before the invention of e-mail.



The way to spot a leitmotif is to look for story elements that connect to each other that are their due to a choice or decision on the part of the writer. So when Lina is digging in her purse to find some money to pay the train conductor for Johnnie’s ticket, she pulls out a postage stamp... and Johnnie says that will do - it’s as good as money - then tells the conductor to use the stamp to write to his mother. He *could* have just used the coins she pulled out, but the writer made a decision to use a postage stamp... because it has to do with letters (and maybe another reason we will look at in a moment).

After Johnnie cancels their first date... then seems to disappear... Lina goes to the post office and asks if there are any letters for her that may have been misplaced.



When Lina decides to elope with Johnnie, she tells her mother and father that she is going to the post office in town... she could have said she was going to the store, but letters and the mail are the leitmotif.

Johnnie has that letter from Captain Melbeck offering him a job in his pocket.

The letter from the insurance company that Lina sneaks a peak at.

And at least a half dozen more instances. Throughout the film, letters and the post office are an additional thread connecting parts of the story. You might even add in those Scrabble letters - they could have been playing any game. These are conscious choices on the part of the writer - just as the use of *water* is the leitmotif in CHINATOWN and sharks are the leitmotif in LADY FROM SHANGHAI and mirror reflections are the leitmotif in PSYCHO. The leitmotif isn’t something required to tell the story, they are and additional element. All of these letters and stamps and post office visits seem to be leading to something... the ending that Hitchcock claims he wanted to use, but the studio wouldn’t let him.

Unfilmed Ending:

SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS!

Hey, now that I’ve spoiled all of the suspense in the film, let me spoil the ending!



Hitchcock has always said he had an ending for this film that the studio wouldn’t let him use - Lina writes a letter to her mother that Johnnie is killing her slowly with poison he learned about from the mystery writer, but she is allowing it to happen because she loves him. She seals the letter in an envelope, stamps it, and then Johnnie comes with the poisoned milk. She asks him to do her a favor and mail the letter to her mother... then drinks the milk and dies. Johnnie takes the letter to the post box - not knowing it contains the information that will lead to his arrest and conviction - and drops it through the slot. Cool ending... but there has always been a dispute about whether it ever existed or not. There is no trace of a script with that ending.



The ending of the film - where Johnnie seems to be trying to push her out of the speeding car, but ends up saving her, then tells her the poison was for himself because he’s facing jail time for embezzling money and would rather kill himself than shame her - was *not* the original ending... even though it fits the “guilty”/”innocent” pattern. There was a previous ending that test audiences hated...

Lina drinks the glass of milk she believes is poisoned, hugs Johnnie and tells her that she loves him no matter what he has done... Johnnie realizes she thinks he has been trying to kill her, and that does not trust him. He is ashamed and leaves her... and then World War 2 breaks out, and just like in ATONEMENT they lose track of each other.

Later, she is on a train - in a scene similar to the opening scene - sees him in a newspaper as an RAF fighter pilot in uniform like her father. She goes to the airbase where the Commander tells her that he is their best pilot - a hero who has risked his life for his fellow pilots again and again - and the nickname of the plane he flies is “Monkeyface” - his nickname for Lina. He may not return from his current mission - attacking Berlin. Lina realizes he is an honorable man who really did love her. The End.

That ending seems designed to not work... making me wonder if the plan all along was to replace the ending all along with the one Hitchcock claims he always wanted...



And when we look at the Leitmotif - letters and stamps - and add Johnnie’s line to the conductor after he uses Lina’s stamp to pay the difference on his train ticket, “Write to your mother”, it all seems to be leading to that ending that Hitchcock described. I suspect Hitchcock wanted his mailbox ending from the very beginning, but knew the studio would not let it fly with a star like Cary Grant in the lead (other actors like Edmund O’Brien were considered for the lead, and before Hitchcock was involved Orson Welles was going to play the lead in a version where Johnnie *was* a killer and later shot down by the police after a chase)... so he waited until test audiences rejected the original ending, then let the studio “discover” the logical ending with the mailbox so they would think it was their brilliant idea... and instead we ended up with Johnnie’s completely out of character wish to commit suicide to save her from the shame of being married to an embezzler.

Neither the original ending nor the ending we ended up with, fit the movie that comes before them. It’s the most out of place ending of any Hitchcock film - including TOPAZ’s post production suicide ending.



Though there is no record of the ending *on paper* with Johnnie poisoning Lina while Hitchcock was involved in the production, *I* would not have a written version ready, either. One of the skills a screenwriter develops is the ability to make the other guy think he came up with the idea - so having that ending on paper would ruin any chance of having it end up on screen, since it would obviously have been *Hitchcock’s* idea. Best way to play this is to have nothing on paper and let the Executives watch the movie and realize that all of the pieces are leading up to this idea *they* thought of - the poisoning of Lina and the letter to her mother. But what if you set this all up... and the executives *don’t see the obvious*? I think the ending Hitchcock always talked about in interviews is the ending he intended... but then got screwed by the studios - a star as big as Cary Grant could not be a killer, even if it *was* the obvious ending.

Sound Track: Good score by Franz Waxman who would later do REAR WINDOW.

By the way - part of the Hitchcock loyalty of working with the same people - the gal who plays the maid will also play the woman with the dead baby in LIFEBOAT.

Except for the iffy ending, SUSPICION still works as a romantic suspense film, and is probably the predecessor of movies like JAGGED EDGE and SEA OF LOVE. And like INCEPTION, the ending provokes a great deal of conversation and debate. I think after he saves her from falling out of the car, he drives her home and poisons her - the end.

- Bill

The other Fridays With Hitchcock.

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Fridays With Hitchcock: SABOTEUR (1942)

Screenplay by Pete Viertel and Joan Harrison and Dorothy Parker.

The middle child between THE 39 STEPS and NORTH BY NORTHWEST, this is a man-on-the-run-through-landmarks story. It’s strange - when we think of Hitchcock movies, after we get past PSYCHO, we tend to think of them all as man-on-the-run films, when there are really only five where the guy is running. Though there are a lot of falsely accused people, very few of them *run*. In SPELLBOUND he escapes the institution and then *hides*. In THE WRONG MAN he’s stuck in jail! But these three films use the “double chase” method with the man on the run pretty much the whole time. Like in NORTH BY NORTHWEST where our hero Roger O. Thornhill is chasing spy George Kaplan as well as *being chased* by the police, in SABOTEUR our hero is chasing the real saboteur as well as being chased by the police.



Nutshell: During World War 2, Glendale, California factory worker Barry Kane (Bob Cummings) ends up prime suspect in a fire that takes down his plant and kills his best friend and ends up on the run. He believes a new employee named Fry (Norman Lloyd) was behind it, but there is no employee with that name at the plant. So, Barry goes in search of Fry - while evading a nationwide manhunt - and discovers a vast terrorist cell operating in the United States composed of US citizens who think we’d be better off under German rule. As he chases Fry across the country, he encounters all sorts of Americans with opinions on what makes America a great country (a bit of wartime propaganda) and ends up kidnaping cute advertizement model Patricia (who is on billboards for a mortuary!) (played by Priscilla Lane). She starts out thinking he’s guilty, ends up learning he’s innocent and helping him... and they stop the terrorists from blowing up a brand new battleship and take down the terrorist cell lead by important members of high society Charles Tobin (suave Otto Kruger) and Mrs. Van Sutton (elegant Alma Kruger - no relation) ... which ends in a fight on the Statue Of Liberty!

Experiment: Though no story experiment, the film is filled with great technical experiments, many you probably never noticed. I’m going to talk direction here and writing in the Great Scenes section, so we will be jumping back and forth in the narrative a bit.



In the first few minutes of the film we get a great shot that may have inspired some of the suspense techniques used in THE PARALLAX VIEW and THE INTERNATIONAL - a very still shot of a factory wall... the stillness broken by a cloud of thick black smoke that drifts slowly into frame... and eventually takes over the frame, turning everything black with smoke. The idea of using the *lack of motion* to highlight the smoke is a great exercise in contrast that was used again and again by Alan J. Pakula in PARALLAX and seems to pop up almost accidentally in THE INTERNATIONAL (which leads me to believe it may have been in the script but didn’t make it to screen, along with some of the other suspense elements in that film). The smoke looks even more sinister because ity is the only thing moving in the shot.

There’s a trick shot in the Carnival Caravan sequence - when the police stop the caravan and wee see all of those vehicles stretched out into the distance with policemen searching them, that’s a forced perspective shot with miniature vehicles... and miniature *people* - the policemen farthest from the camera are little people!



There’s an interesting shot in the Soda City sequence when Patricia is hiding in the next room and the two terrorists are talking with Barry. They hear a noise from the room she is hiding in and go to investigate. That’s done in a fairly long take, which makes us feel as if she vanishes before our eyes - she’s in that other room, makes a noise, they go to investigate and the room is empty. No actual vanishing occurred, because we just heard the *sound* in the next room, but it makes us feel as if we have seen the impossible.



There are some other great shots and sequences, but let’s get right to the good stuff: the dress rehearsal for VERTIGO where we *actually see* an actor fall off the Statue Of Liberty’s torch, screaming all the way down to the ground. If there was ever an impossible shot - this is it. But today we know exactly how it was done - a composite shot with actor Norman Lloyd on a platform that could rotate, and the camera yanked from a medium shot - hundreds of feet at high speed - to an extreme long shot where he’s little more than a spec. Marry that shot to the shot from the Statue Of Liberty’s torch, and we see an actual human falling - so much better than some bland shot of a dummy falling, and we can have a great POV shot of our hero as the only one who can prove him innocent falls out of his grip and splats.

Hitch Appearance: Outside a Rexall Drugstore, looking through the window.

Great Scenes: Because this film is the brother to NORTH BY NORTHWEST, I’m going to find different aspects of the story to highlight than the ones I used in NbNW... and that started out a challenge but I think I’ve pulled a couple of interesting lessons from SABOTEUR...

Clues To Locations: One of the most important things in a screenplay is what I call the “A-B-C of the plot” - the logical way that one thing leads to another in a story so that none of it seems forced or contrived. Many screenplays have problems with this - including a couple of movies I’ve recently seen. Usually you have an antagonist that is driving the story - and we have what I call “tennis plotting” - when the protagonist reacts to what the antagonist has done, and the antagonist then reacts to the protagonist, and then the protagonist reacts to what the antagonist did. It goes back and forth like a game of tennis. But some stories, especially mysteries and some thrillers, have a trail of clues that are followed. That’s how SABOTEUR works, so let’s take a look at how stories like that are plotted.

In SABOTEUR our hero starts out knowing nothing - not even who the villain is - and one piece of evidence leads to the next which leads to the next and he learns more along the way. The key to plotting a story like this is to have our hero find information that logically leads to the next piece of information, without any of it seeming obvious. We don’t want the audience to get ahead of the hero, we want them to be along for the ride.

SABOTEUR opens with Barry and his buddy going on a lunch break at the defense plant. They are distracted by a pretty gal doing Rosie The Riveter work and bump into new guy at the plant, Fry... causing some stuff to fall out of his jacket pocket. Barry and his buddy apologize and pick up Fry’s things, one of which is an envelope. After the sabotage, Barry tells the police about Fry - but there is no employee named Fry! Barry goes on the run - and realizes he must find Fry (a goal) to clear himself...



And we get a great memory flash of picking up that envelope. The envelope goes from out of focus, into focus, and we can read the address - a ranch. But other parts of the envelope remain blurry - just like a real memory. That’s great, because later in the film he will have to remember the same envelope and concentrate on that blurry area - giving us two clues from one envelope. The ranch address clue leads Barry to the ranch, where the ranch owner Charles Tobin says he’s never heard of Fry. We get the memory flash again - the envelope comes into focus - and this time we can clearly read the name of the ranch and know that Tobin is lying. While Barry is acting as if he believes that he’s in the wrong place, Tobin leaves for a moment to take a phone call, and Tobin’s toddler granddaughter starts digging things out of Tobin’s coat pockets... and one thing is a telegram with the words “Soda City” on it. That leads Barry to Soda City... which is a ghost town.



Barry and Patricia search the ghost town and find a building with a ringing telephone! That building is being lived in by somebody. There is also a strange hole cut in a door. Barry and Patricia search the room and find a telescope and a tripod - and when they put one on the other the telescope is the perfect height to look out that hole in the door. They look through the telescope and see the Hoover Dam. Note how most of these clues are “some assembly required” - like that telescope. Instead of giving us something obvious, Barry must either remember or put the pieces together to figure out where he’s going. If at all possible, give your protagonist a bunch of pieces to the puzzle or a riddle of some sort, so that it doesn’t seem too easy.



In the Soda City shack they are discovered by the terrorists, and Barry uses a newspaper that calls him the prime suspect in the factory sabotage as his bona fides to prove he’s a terrorist, too... so one of the terrorists agrees takes him to safety in New York City... where he discovers their plan to blow up a new battleship. Each clue leads him to a location where he finds another clue that leads him to the next location. Because he has to *work* to find the next clue, it doesn’t seem as if the next step is just being handed to him. Even that toddler digging around and uncovering the telegram was done as a suspense scene where he could be killed if he doesn’t get that telegram back in Tobin’s pocket before he comes back.

Hitchcock’s Chocolates:

There is no excitement in things going right, so when Barry tries to return the telegram to the coat pocket the toddler grabs it and runs right into Tobin’s arms. Busted! Okay, you are out west at the Deep Springs Ranch - how do you escape?

Hitchcock had this great theory of organic screenwriting that if your story takes place is Switzerland, you make a list of all of the things that Switzerland is famous for, all of the things you would naturally find in that country, and use those things in your story. The same things goes with characters - what is the character’s occupation, what tools is he or she familiar with... and those are the tools they will gravitate to in order to solve the problem. So when you are going to have a chase that begins at a ranch in the west, it’s going to be on horseback instead of in cars. And when Barry is trying to get to that ranch in the first place, he has to figure out some way to travel that can not be traced by the police... what moves across country that is fairly anonymous? Long haul truckers. The highways are full of trucks, and if he hitches a ride on one he will blend right in.

We have Hoover Dam and Ghost Towns and a great dive off a bridge that echos a similar scene in THE 39 STEPS. This seems obvious - but all of those cross country locations are landmarks or things that are interesting parts of the landscape, and once we get to New York City we have scenes in Radio City Music Hall and on the Statue Of Liberty and a major plot element deals with sky scrapers and taxi drivers! If the story takes place in New York City, these are the places and things you expect to see.

The other element in SABOTEUR is World War 2 and the war effort - and these elements also form the story. There is a war effort fund raiser, and the terrorists are blowing up a new battle ship... again, these things may seem obvious, but many screenplays don’t do this. They’d go to Switzerland and forget to show a chocolate maker or the Alps or people skiing. Or have Barry escape from the ranch in a car. Or have Barry be an executive instead of a factory worker in a defense plant.

Look at your story and where it takes place and make some lists of elements that are part of those things. You want the pieces to be part of the whole - connected.



Invisible Storytelling: There is some great “invisible storytelling” in this film - information delivered to the audience through a situation and actions rather than dialogue. Though some of the dialogue gets a little heavy handed, there’s a great bit lifted from FRANKENSTEIN where our man on the run ends up taking shelter from the storm at a remote cabin in the woods... owned by a Blind Man (Vaughan Glaser) who lives there with his dog. Barry is careful not to use his name and careful not to give the blind man any clues to his identity. Lots of suspense, as Barry is in handcuffs at this point and doesn’t want to rattle them - how do you explain that noise? He’s also been on the run for a while and is starving, and grabs an apple, taking a bite. The Blind Man hears this - and tells him to help himself, and if he would like a drink or some dinner, that’s fine. The Blind Man does not see Barry as a wanted man - doesn’t know that Barry’s face is planted all overt town on wanted posters, and when the radio gives a description of this wanted saboteur, has no idea what Barry looks like. Justice is blind.



But when the Blind Man’s niece Patricia arrives, she sees who Barry is, thinks he’s dangerous and wants to turn him over to the police, just based on the newspaper headlines and radio reports. She is judging a book by its cover - or its news reports in this case. But the Blind Man can see the truth - Barry has not acted violent or dangerous and in America a man is innocent until proven guilty. The Blind Man has known who Barry was all along - heard his handcuffs when he came through the door. But instead of judging Barry on the press reports, judges him on his actions. He’s a polite young man. The Blind Man tells Patricia to drive Barry down to the blacksmith’s shop to have the handcuffs removed...

But she double crosses him - and they become that couple from THE 39 STEPS... he takes her hostage and slowly proves that he isn’t a bad guy but a wrongly accused man.

Another get piece of “invisible storytelling” - when the fire breaks out at the factory, Fry hands Barry a big industrial fire extinguisher and tells him to go put it out. Barry’s best friend takes the fire extinguisher from Barry and runs into the burning factory... But Fry has filled the extinguisher with gasoline! And Barry’s friend catches fire and burns to death (on camera - gross!). When the long haul trucker picks up Barry, there is a fire extinguisher mounted inside the truck right next to where he’s sitting. Barry looks at the fire extinguisher and turns away from it in fear... And the trucker starts talking about how handy having a fire extinguisher can be - and all of the truck and car fires where people would have burned to death... and everything the trucker says about the fire extinguisher reminds *us* about Barry’s friend having that gasoline filled fire extinguisher blow up in his hands and turn him into a human fireball.



Just as this film is about World War 2, it is also about America - so another bit of “invisible storytelling” comes after Barry and Patricia’s car breaks down in the middle of nowhere and they end up jumping on a Carnival Caravan in the middle of the night. They knock on the back door, it opens... and there is nobody on the other side! Until Barry and Patricia look down and see The Major - a midget. This is a car full of Circus Freaks! There’s the Bearded Lady - her beard in curlers for the night. The Fat Woman (why was that a freak?). The Siamese Twins who are in the middle of a spat and not talking to each other, “Will someone tell her to do something about her insomnia? I keep tossing and turning all night!” The Strong Man. And the most eloquent of the group, the Human Skeleton - a tall very very thin man. All of these very different people - different than you and me and different than each other.

When the police stop the Caravan and begin searching the cars, The Major says they should throw Barry out. He’s going to get them all in trouble. As The Major tries to throw Barry and Patricia out of the Caravan Car, the Human Skeleton says they should put it to a vote. So, they vote. All of these very different people, setting aside their differences, voting to make a decision that the whole group will live by. Even the very vocal Major goes along with the outcome of the vote (which is to hide Barry and Patricia from the police). Okay - just as we’ve had blind justice, we now have a diverse group of people voting and then working together after they have voted. That’s America, folks! We may not like each other, but we’re family - and when we vote on something, the majority wins and even those who voted against pitch in. Once we as a country have agreed to something, we are *all* Americans and we *all* accept the decision. A great piece of patriotism disguised as a comedy scene with freak show members. At no time in this scene does anyone say, “We’re Americans!” but the scene *demonstrates* the concept of democracy. With a bearded lady. And Siamese Twins that aren’t talking to each other.



Nice Villains: One of the great things about this script are the villain characters - not a mustache twirler in the group! You don’t want cardboard cut out 2 dimensional villains in your screenplay - they just seem fake. You always want villains who are motivated and real - and SABOTEUR has some of the creepiest scenes of any Hitchcock film when the killers do normal, everyday things that make them just like someone you might know... and that’s more frightening than having villains who you can spot twirling their mustaches from a mile away. You can avoid the EVIL villains, and they are easily spotted by the police... but when the nice guy next door is a killer? You could be dead before you figure it out.

One of the things I like to do with my villains (and other characters) is “character shading” - you show an aspect of their character that isn’t plot related (except it really is - because you are making the villain more realistic, and that makes them more frightening). So when we first meet our master villain, Charles Tobin - the leader of a pro-Nazi terrorist cell made up of USA citizens - he’s playing with his cute little grand daughter at poolside in his backyard. If he owns a big rubber stamp that says “Find Him & Kill Him” it isn’t shown in this scene. He’s introduced as a fairly typical grandfather, and a kind and helpful person. The scene goes out of its way to show him as a normal person, not someone you should fear... And that is brilliant! Because he *is* someone you should fear - a terrorist leader! If Barry were to tell the police that this nice grandfather were the leader of a terrorist cell, the police would not believe him. So being a nice grandpa isn’t just a great cover for Tobin, it also makes him more powerful... and more realistic. He’s just like you and me... except he’s going to blow up Hoover Dam.



Later, after Barry convinces the two terrorists at Soda City that he is one of them, the soft spoken blond Freeman (Alan Baxter) offers to transport him cross country to New York where the terrorist cell is headquartered. In the car along the way, Freeman talks to Barry about his young son and his beautiful flowing blond hair... is he wrong not to have his son’s hair cut? Freeman talks about how when he was a boy (in Germany) he had long blond hair, and he wants his son to grow up to be like him. The great thing about this exchange is that it makes Freeman into a good father, worried about his son’s hair and yet trying to give his son a sense of values. Of course, those would be Nazi terrorist values! It is a creepy scene, because the exact same conversation might come from some 1950s family sitcom dad - nothing evil about anything Freeman says, but again we get “family values” that include world domination and killing a bunch of innocent people. To Freeman, blowing up Hoover Dam or sinking a new battleship is just another day at work, and he’ll go home to his wife and family like any other sitcom dad... and that is more frightening to me than any mustache twirler.



Once they get to New York City, we are introduced to the leader of the East Coast branch of this terrorist cell - society matron Mrs. Sutton (Alma Kruger) who lives in an impossibly luxurious Manhattan apartment and is involved in a number of charities... which are probably fronts for Nazi spy rings. She is that wealthy society woman who is more concerned with her jewelry than trifles like politics - a silly rich woman - except that is her cover. She is really a cut-throat terrorist disguised as Margaret Dumont. This is elegant high society, not the kind of people we think about when we think of terrorists. Mrs. Sutton is having a charity ball, and seems more concerned with the party than with twirling her mustache - and her conversation isn’t about pure evil and world domination, but about making sure her guests are served properly and her reputation as a pillar of the community.

Barry ends up busted, because Charles Tobin is there - and they have a nice little conversation about how much money can be made through intelligent investments if the Nazis conquer the United States. Tobin also mentions that after Patricia escaped she went right to the police... but it was one of Tobin’s policemen - there are many police officers who believe the United States might have more law and order under the Nazis. Tobin has Barry taken to where they are holding Patricia... and after a few moments of confusion where Patricia thinks Barry really is one of them, she finally realizes he is a prisoner, too... and the pair attempt an escape.



Trapped In A Crowd: Barry and Patricia end up in the grand ballroom, in the middle of Mrs. Sutton’s big charity event. When they head to the exit doors, a pair of tuxedo-clad men block the exit. There are a pair of men in tuxedos blocking every exit. They are trapped in a crowded charity ball - with a full orchestra and people dancing and sipping drinks and joking. Barry goes up to a guest and explains that he’s a prisoner and people are trying to kill him... and the guest just laughs. Gotta be a joke, right? The guys in tuxedos at the doors are just staff members there to open the door for you and keep out the party crashers. Barry tries another guest... and this one tells him that it will all be easier if he and the girl just give themselves up. You can not tell who the bad guys are! They look just like anybody else!



Barry and Patricia need to get deep enough into the crowd that the terrorists can’t really do anything to them... so they start *dancing* like many of the other guests - while they look for some way out of this. They are surrounded by people - almost all of them just regular folks who are here for the charity ball - but still trapped. It’s a great suspense scene... and just when you think maybe they can keep dancing until they find some way out of this, a guy comes and cuts in - dancing with Patricia. She’s been captured while *dancing*.

Barry comes up with a scheme that is the halfway point in the evolution of that scene from THE 39 STEPS where Robert Donat makes a speech at a political rally to avoid capture, and that scene in NORTH BY NORTHWEST where Cary Grant disrupts the auction to avoid capture... He grabs the microphone, has everyone applaud their host Mrs. Sutton, and then announces that Mrs. Sutton has graciously offered to auction off one of the famous Sutton Family Jewels tonight - and Mrs. Sutton is forced to take off an expensive bracelet and auction it off, which completely disrupts the villains plans to capture him because now Barry is the center of attention, and forces Mrs. Sutton and some of her henchmen to also be the center of attention - unable to do anything while Barry attempts to escape... and fails! The story does a great job of making you think he’s found a way to escape... only to have him captured again.



Biggest To Smallest: Eventually, after the use of a fire sprinkler and a paper airplane, both Barry and Patricia escape and try to stop Fry from blowing up a brand new battle ship... and Patricia follows Fry to the Statue Of Liberty, and Barry shows up to capture Fry - the only man who can prove that he’s not the saboteur who burned down the factory. Barry chases Fry up to the torch, where there’s a great illustration of Hitchcock’s “biggest to smallest” theory. This is an interesting theory because it is both a *story* theory and a *film/editing* theory, the way that a “scrod” is both a fish and a way of preparing a fish. The idea is that a large event can be caused by a small thing, or that in the middle of a large event there is a small drama that is important. Often these story elements are shot with a single shot that goes from extreme long shot to close up or by editing shots together from extreme long shot to close up.

In one of my favorite unknown Hitchcock films, YOUNG AND INNOCENT, they guy and gal on the run have and they discover the real killer has twitchy eyes and will be at a certain address at a certain time. They take the only witness who can identify the killer to the address - a packed night club! Hundreds of people dancing and a live band! The camera does an amazing overhead shot that begins with our heroes entering the night club, drifts over the packed nightclub and the hundreds of people to the opposite side of the room, then glides down to the band... ending on a close up of one band member’s eyes as they twitch uncontrollably.

Biggest to smallest.



In SABOTEUR, when Barry corners Fry on the torch, Fry takes a step back, loses balance, falls over the edge! The only one who can prove Barry is innocent! But when Barry looks over the edge, Fry is hanging on to Liberty’s palm! Barry climbs down to rescue him... and we get these great long shots of those two little humans on the HUGE Statue Of Liberty... and we edit from shot to shot getting closer until we have Barry holding Fry’s coat sleeve trying to pull him up... then even closer - to the stitching that connects the sleeve of the coat to the body of the coat as the stitches begin to unravel!

Look for Barry holding onto Fry under the torch in the upper left hand side of this picture:



Biggest to smallest.

This huge dramatic scene on the Statue Of Liberty all comes down to a thread!

The police arrive, hear enough from Fry to exonerate Barry, then the last stitch unravels and Fry falls...

And we get to see him fall all of the way down and splat in one shot.

Sound Track: Frank Skinner - an okay score, not up to Herrmann standards, but it’s not obtrusive.



Hitchcock always seemed to be getting in trouble with the government with his wartime movies - in NOTORIOUS his plot was about Germany building an atomic bomb when *we* were still working on it... and working on it in secret. When Hitchcock used something ultra top secret for his plot, the FBI wanted to know who told him about it. Hitchcock said atomic bombs were a theory, he just figured someone would be trying to use that theory to make a real bomb.

And in SABOTEUR he got into trouble for a shot of the capsized Normandie in New York Harbor. While filming SABOTEUR, the SS Normandie - an ocean liner - was being turned into a troop ship in New York Harbor when a fire broke out and the *huge* ship ended up capsizing. Universal Studios dispatched newsreel cameramen for some footage that would be used on the news - but Hitchcock gave them some special instructions on a couple of shots he wanted... and then cut those shots into the movie: Fry driving past the capsized Normandie sees the ship and smiles - as if he sunk it! Because this implied that there were real saboteurs working in New York City and that they actually got away with sinking the Normandie while it was under military guard, the FBI expressed their anger at the scene to Hitchcock.



The biggest problem with SABOTEUR are the two stars - Robert Cummings and Priscilla Lane. It’s not easy to love that Bob - he overacts and gives the most obvious and on-the-nose line readings. He spends half of the film being angry - and the rest of the film being dull instead of charming. Priscilla Lane is cute and wholesome and plastic. When she tells him that she’s a model, you think - WTF? She’s about as far from a model as you can get (even in 1944).

And the two have zero chemistry - actually, they have *negative* chemistry. When they kiss while dancing, it’s a good kiss - but you don’t believe it for a second. No heat, no passion, not even any *fun*. The script said “kiss” and they kiss. These two are a poor substitute for either Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint or Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll. As screenwriters we have no control over casting at all, and many film are sunk by bad casting. All of the other elements work well, but the casting kills it.

Just as THE PARADINE CASE was killed by casting Louis Jordan (and Gregory Peck), this film would have been a million times better with a different actor in the lead - someone who wouldn’t have yelled half of his lines. But, it’s still a fun movie with some great scenes and a great way to kill a couple of hours.

- Bill

The other Fridays With Hitchcock.

BUY THE DVD AT AMAZON:

Fridays With Hitchcock: Foreign Correspondent (1940)

Screenplay by Charles Bennett and Joan Harrison, with punch up by Robert Benchley and James Hilton... and Ben Hecht.

Before Pearl Harbor, the United States was supposedly neutral in World War Two, and movies reflected this. Though part of that may have been to sell American movies to overseas audiences (including Germany), another part was that the country was divided on the war in several different ways. After World War 1, most people in the United States were isolationists and believed the new war in Europe had nothing to do with us. We were not the world’s police, we did not owe any other country anything. Unless the United States was invaded, it wasn’t our war.





Even after Germany invaded Poland and six other countries in three short months and Japan invaded Manchuria, Americans were still divided into Isolationists and Interventionists. One group thought should stay out of the war entirely - after the bombing of Pearl Harbor many people *protested* that we should stay out of the war, and the other group thought we should stop Germany from taking over Europe.

One of the largest Isolationist groups was America First - a strange mix of 1940s left wing peaceniks and businessmen who wanted to sell things to Germany ... and some reputed pro-Hitler pro-Nazis Americans. Basically, anyone who wanted America to stay out of the European War for whatever conflicting reasons they may have had. The America First group grew in popularity just before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, believing that sending military aid to England left the United States vulnerable to attack. Hollywood couldn’t ignore the war, so they made movies that either ignored both sides... or were strongly Isolationist or strongly Interventionist (depending on the politics of the producer and studio). Disney was an Isolationist and an America Firster and made cartoons against the United States entering the war. Other studios made films like A YANK IN THE RAF which seemed designed to show the brave British pilots fighting the evil other guys - the film still had to sell to Germany, right? Somewhere in here, the German Ambassador to the United States not only complained about these pro-Interventionist movies, but actually managed to get some studios to fire “non-Aryan” employees. Weird, huh?



A year before Fox made A YANK IN THE RAF, independent producer Walter Wanger, who flew fighter planes in World War 1, made FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT - a pro-intervention film that calls a Hitler a “Hitler”. A piece of pre-WW2 propaganda made long before Pearl Harbor and the rest of the Hollywood pro-Interventionist films that would follow. Wanger was Jewish, born in San Francisco, and one of the top producers in Hollywood. Also, a bit of a rable rowser - he made Fritz Lang’s YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE (criminal leads), John Ford’s STAGECOACH, and after going to prison for shooting his wife’s lover he made Don Siegel’s RIOT IN CELL BOCK 11 (pro-prison reform). He was making edgy films before that phrase existed.

To direct FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT he rented Alfred Hitchcock from David O’Selznick - and Hitch brought his favorite writers and crew. Charles Bennet, who wrote Hitchcock’s first sound movie BLACKMAIL, as well as THE 39 STEPS. THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH and five other Hitchcock films (plus many more screenplays you may know and love) and Joan Harrison who wrote five films for Hitchcock and went on to produce his TV show for a while and edit his fiction magazine and the short story collections. Both were British writers Hitchcock took with him when he came to America and both probably had family back in the UK in peril unless the United States joined the war. FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT may have been pro-Intervention before any other film, but it was still a *Hollywood* movie, and profit came first. The film had to be a sell tickets, and lots of them.




Nutshell: Big city crime reporter Johnny Jones (Joel McCrea) is sent to Europe to cover the biggest crime around - World War 2. The newspaper editor is tired of foreign correspondents who just print government press releases and wants a tough investigative reporter who won’t believe everything he’s told. Jones is introduced to Stephen Fisher (suave Herbert Marshall), head of a United Nations-like peace group who are trying to stop the war from escalating. The key man on the side of peace is Dutchman Van Meer - a kindly old man. Jones manages to share a cab with Van Meer on the way to a peace conference in London, thinking he’s going to get an exclusive interview - but Van Meer just talks about pigeons in the park (really). At the peace conference Jones flirts like crazy with a beautiful woman, Carol (Laraine Day), who ends up being Fisher’s daughter. But Van Meer ends up mysteriously called away before he can speak... he just vanishes.

Before Van Meer’s next speech, he is shot dead by an assassin, there’s a car chase, all kinds of twists and turns, and the discovery that Van Meer may still be alive - a double was shot - and the peace group may not be interested in peace at all. The other players in the story are British journalist ffoilliott (ultra suave George Sanders), always drunk UK desk reporter Stebbins (comedian and co-writer Robert Benchley), UK-based bodyguard Rowley (Edmund Gwenn), and creepy Fisher family friend Mr. Krug (Eduardo Ciannelli). The film is basically a globe trotting spy story, much like a James Bond film, which uses a lot of great locations and offers us some fantastic lessons on Set Pieces, Speeches, Gags, and Leading the Audience.




Hitch Appearance: Walking down the street past Jones when he hears Van Meer's name... and jogs back to split a cab with him and secretly pump him for information. Of course, he only gets pigeon talk.

Sound Track:Alfred Newman – a good score that works for the comedy aspects, the romance, and the suspense. In scenes like the windmill sequence that are mostly silent except for the background noise, the music is unobtrusive yet still adds to the suspense and tension. The main theme is kind of whimsical and works well with Joel McCrea's charming nice guy lead.

Bird Appearance: Van Meer goes on and on about the damned pigeons in the park. Also a great scene where Jones hides in Van Meer’s cell when the villains come in to question him... and Van Meer looks *right at him*! The villains look where Van Meer is looking... and see only a bird. Jones is hiding in the shadow behind the bird.

Hitch Stock Company: Hitchcock often used the same actors again and again in movies, and FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT is no exception. Edmund Gwenn starred in THE SKIN GAME way back in 1931 and WALTZES FROM VIENNA in 1934 and would show up in THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY in 1955 and do some work on the TV show, and Herbert Marshall starred in MURDER back in 1930 and did a few episodes of the TV series, and George Sanders was in REBECCA.

Experiment: Though some of the film takes place in London, the only experiment here is that this is Hitchcock’s first American film about Americans. REBECCA had a British cast, and once those soundstage doors were closed he might as well have been shooting it in England. But here we have a story about an American - a fish out of water in England and Europe... two places where Hitchcock would feel at home. So for Hitchcock part of the challenge was find a way to see locations that were familiar to him as an outsider would see them.

This was also a “loan out” movie - Hitch was under contract to Selznick, but Selznick was renting him out to other producers for a hefty fee and paying Hitchcock his normal salary... and pocketing the rest. This was discussed in more detail in the entry on THE PARADINE CASE. Selznick was famous for putting stars and directors under contract and then *not* making movies with them, but renting them out to other producers and making a pile of money. Though Selznick was a big name after GONE WITH THE WIND (which is still probably the #1 film of all time in ticket sales) he really didn't make many movies. Most of his income was probably from renting out people like Hitchcock.

FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT is a great example of Gags, Set Pieces, Speeches, and Leading The Audience. So those are the elements we will look at in this entry.




Gags: One of my favorite things about older films that we seem to have lost in current movies are *gags* - though gags don’t have to be funny (there are many serious gags and running gags in older movies) because Hitchcock had a great sense of humor, many of the running gags in FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT are funny. Not laugh outloud funny, but a little smile that pops up in a few scenes.

When I say “gags” I don't mean jokes, like the newspaper managing editor (Harry Davenport) telling an editor watching the news wire not to declare war for a couple of minutes, I mean some physical or verbal bit that may be repeated throughout the story.

The first gag is all about names - the managing editor decides that “Johnny Jones” doesn’t sound dignified enough to be a foreign correspondent, so our hero is given the new name “Huntley Haverstock”. Every time people ask him his name, there’s a moment where he hesitates... and when he answers “Huntley Haverstock” they always give him a strange look. Sometimes he tries to explain that it isn’t his real name... and that’s what elevates this gag from just a gag: it is thematic. One of the elements in the film is that people are not who they claim to be or appear to be: every character seems to have a real identity underneath who they claim to be. So “Huntley” is really Johnny Jones, and a bodyguard is really an assassin and the peace organization’s PR gal is really the leader’s daughter and a homeless man is really an assassin and a trusted character is really the villain and Van Meer has a double who was killed and even “Old man Clarke” ends up being a hot single woman. Everyone in this film has a second identity, and all of that starts with the running gag about Johnny Jones getting a name change. Oh, and there’s ffoilliott’s name - which is a running gag in itself.




The next gag is Jones always losing his hat. There’s a great scene on the ship before it sales for England where Jones and all of his friends and family see him off. He’s going to a world at war, and they may never see him again. Everyone brings him gifts, including a bowler hat, which he models. When Jones takes off his hat to hug his mother for what may be the last time (a big moment) his little niece and nephew take turns trying on that hat and giggling. The great thing about this complete kid cuteness is that it’s *family* which amplifies Jones’s goodbye with his mother rather than distracting from it. When the whistle blows and all of the friends and family hurry off the ship before it sets sail... the little boy has the hat in his hand.




Throughout the film, Jones keeps losing his hat - and it’s not just a gag, it’s often an important part of the plot. Every time he checks his hat for a function or takes it off, it’s gone and must be replaced. But after chasing Van Meer’s assassin in Holland, and having the assassin's car just vanish near some windmills, Jones’ hat blows off across a field... and when he looks up he sees the sails of a windmill moving in the *opposite direction* as the wind. So the hat shows us the direction of the wind... before it lands in a stream and is ruined. Another hat falls off on the observation deck of Westminster Cathedral tower in London to show how far down it would be if Jones were pushed to his death (and then someone does that!). Later in the film Jones says he was “just talking through his hat” - the whole movie is about hats! Though it’s amusing every time Jones loses his hat, usually these errant hats also give us some story information at the same time. Both the name gag and the hat gag are not just amusing, they are critical parts of the story. They may have been *funny* but they were integral to the story as well.

Oh, and during that car chase there’s a drunk guy with a pint of beer in his hand who keeps trying to cross the street... but every time a car roars past. Finally he just turns around and goes back into the pub.




Another great running gag is the little Latvian man who seems to be at every function that Jones attends, but doesn’t speak a word of English and Jones (of course) speaks no Latvian. For some reason these two always end up hanging out together having a non-conversation (sort of miming) and like the lost hats and multiple identities, the little Latvian works his way into the story a few times. The great thing about this little guy is that he has the most expressive face of anyone I’ve ever seen on film - and manages to come up with the perfect expression to communicate whatever he can only say in Latvian. In one great scene there’s a knock on the door of Jones’ hotel room, and two men who claim to be the police want to take him downtown for questioning... except Jones slyly tests them, and they don’t seem to be police at all (more false identities) so he says he was just going to take a bath, and could they wait a moment? He goes into the bathroom, locks the door, turns on the water... and climbs out the window onto a very narrow ledge wearing only his robe and underpants!




A very tense scene as he moves along the ledge - birds getting in his way at one point - looking for an unlocked window. Finds one - Carol’s hotel room - and climbs into the bathroom. Carol has some people visiting in the living room, and eventually a guest finds Jones wearing only his bathrobe in the bedroom... and says something to Carol. Carol tells Jones he must leave the way he came before there’s a scandal, and that’s when the little Latvian guy sticks his head into the room, looks from Carol to Jones... and gives a mischievous smile. Soon all of the guests have left so that Jones and Carol can continue whatever they were (or weren’t) doing.




There’s a clever gag next, where Jones get his clothes out of the room with the two false policemen by calling every service in the hotel from maid to maintenance to room service to valet and has them all come up to the room at the same time - trapping the two false policemen - as a bribed bell hop grabs clothes from his closet and sneaks out in the confusion... neglecting to grab Jones’ hat, of course.




Another little one time gag is when a bodyguard hired to protect Jones turns out to really be an assassin trying to kill him... by pushing him off the Westminster Cathedral Tower... and the front page of the newspaper has an arrow showing the path of the victim on his way from the tower to the street. I guess those tabloids haven't changed much! Again – it's a newspaper reporter making the front page of the newspaper, and that's tied to story.

Set Pieces: The Cathedral Tower scene is one of several great set pieces in FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT, and this film (like THE 39 STEPS) seems to be a predecessor of the James Bond films and today's big summer tentpole action flicks. Hitchcock films always had big spectacle scenes – even the silent films! A set piece is a big exciting scene – in the studio days it was a scene so amazing that it was worth building a new set for, rather than just using an existing set on the back lot. Though not all set pieces actually meant building a new set, they were the huge spectacle scenes that would end up in the trailer... just like the big action scenes of today. If you think about those huge James Bond movie action scenes, that's what we're talking about... in the early 1940s.

Van Meer Assassination: Jones goes to an event in Holland where Van Meer is supposed to speak. There is a huge crowd outside the venue, even though it is raining. Dozens of reporters and photographers. Everyone has an umbrella... except Jones, who is in a trenchcoat. Jones has shared a cab with Van Meer previously and hopes to use this to his advantage and get an interview. He greets Van Meer, who just gives him a blank look as if he doesn't recognize Jones. Huh? Then a photographer asks to snap a photo of Van Meer... but there's a gun on the camera! When the flashbulb goes off, so does the gun! Van Meer is shot in the face and killed!




The Assassin runs into the crowd, and all we see are a sea of umbrellas moving as he makes his getaway. Jones gives chase – diving into the sea of umbrellas. Using the umbrellas as kind of a sea of tall grass that moves when the unseen assassin runs through is a great visual, and kind of the predecessor of those early scenes in JAWS where all we see are the barrels or the wake of the shark. It's *evocative* and interesting. A way to make a common chase uncommon and interesting. This is something we can use in our screenplays (I've used different versions in several screenplays – from tall grass rustling to a crowd being jostled). Find the creative and interesting way to write the scene!




The assassin blasts out onto a crowded street, Jones in pursuit. The assassin turns and fires his gun at Jones... killing a bike rider who comes between them for a moment. The assassin keeps firing – killing bystanders! There is a panic on the street. The assassin hops into a getaway car and zips off. Jones basically hijacks a car on the street, ordering the driver to follow the assassin's car. The driver of the car? British reporter ffoilliott (George Saunders) and Fisher's daughter Carol. They give chase – and we get a great car chase, with the assassin firing out the window at them. This chase on rainy streets would be at home in a current action flick – it's pretty exciting.




The chase ends when they lose the assassin's car on a deserted country road filled with windmills. This is where Jones' hat blows away... in the opposite direction than the sails of one of the windmills are turning. Something is strange with that windmill! While ffoilliott and Carol go to get the police, Jones sneaks into the dark windmill...

The Windmill Scene: Okay, they probably built the windmill set for this scene, since it's not likely they had one sitting around on the lot in Hollywood. Jones sneaks into the windmill, which is full of huge turning gears like an obstacle course of wooden teeth. Once Jones sneaks in, he realizes he is in the middle of terrorist central! The assassin is being debriefed in one area and other guys with guns are wandering around – it's like a James Bond scene where Bond sneaks into Blofeld's lair!




Jones hides behind the machinery... but his trenchcoat gets caught in the giant gears, pulling him into their teeth. He has to remain ultra-quiet (the terrorists are only a few feet away) and figure out how not to be ground to pieces. He manages to solve this problem, then climb to an upper room in the windmill... where he finds Van Meer. Wait – he's dead? Jones talks to him – discovers that a double was killed so that the villains would have time to drug and torture Van Meer in order to discover a secret clause in a peace treaty. Jones wants to help Van Meer escape, except for a couple of problems: Van Meer has been given a drug and is doped out of his mind... and the door opens and the terrorists come in! Jones climbs some stairs and hides... but he can't get away because he will make too much noise. So he's stuck halfway in and halfway out of the room.




The terrorists try to get Van Meer to talk – but he looks away... RIGHT AT JONES! Oh, and there's a freakin' bird flying around where Jones is hiding, not making it easy to be quiet. The terrorists turn to look at what Van Meer is staring at... and Jones moves back, hugging the wall, trying to blend with the shadows... and the bird flutters around and the terrorists think that's what Van Meer was looking at. Very tense scene!

But it keeps on going! One of the great things about all of these set pieces is that they have multiple suspense scenes in them and just keep ratcheting up the thrills. Jones manages to get up the stairs and out of the room where they have Van Meer hostage, but now the only way out of the windmill is to go down the stairs and across an exposed interior ramp... with the assassin and two men who are debriefing him *right there*. He waits in the shadows, and when the assassin pulls a sweater over his head – covering his face for a moment – Jones zips across the ramp to the shadows on the other side. Another great suspense bit... and a great idea. How many times have you pulled a sweater or sweat shirt over your head and been “blind” for a second or two? Using that in a suspense scene is genius!




Jones manages to escape, but when he returns later with the police, Van Meer is gone and all evidence that he was ever there has vanished. Jones goes to show the police the car they chased, opens a barn door to expose... an old hay wagon. The police are skeptical. But foilliot notes a homeless guy who was sleeping in the windmill as he rubs dirt on his very clean hands – that's no homeless guy! By the time, the police don't believe anything they say and leave...

Cathedral Tower: Once back in London, Fisher advises Jones that with his life in danger it would be a good idea to hire a professional bodyguard. Jones thinks this is crazy – he's a crime beat reporter who is used to danger. But by this is the father of the woman he loves, so he agrees. The bodyguard is Rowley (Edmund Gwenn) a little man in a bowler hat. When he thinks they are being followed by another car, he has their cab pull over in front of Westminster Cathedral and tells Jones they can lose whoever is following them by going up to the tower – which is open to tourists. Once they get up there, it's obvious that Rowley is not a bodyguard, but an assassin out to kill Jones. There is a great suspense scene on the observation deck of the tower – a group of school kids with a priest on a field trip of some sort, a husband and wife, and some other tourists look out over London from the extreme height... and we know the moment that Rowley and Jones are alone, Jones is going to get thrown over the side to the street hundreds of feet below. Splat! So we get an interesting version of the “ticking clock” - as each tourist leaves, we are closer to Jones' death! Part of the suspense comes from Jones wanting to leave – and Rowley finding some new landmark for him to look at from the tower. Just as the last tourist leaves, the elevator doors open with a husband and wife. The husband wants to look over the ledge, the wife is afraid of heights. Rowley manages to talk her into insisting that her husband leave with her... and that means finally Jones and Rowley are alone, and Jones is going to be thrown over the side to the street below!




This is where we get that tabloid newspaper front page with the arrows showing the path of the guy who fell to his death.

Captured! After several plot twists and some detective work, ffoilliott and Jones find the house where they are keeping Van Meer in London... but everything goes completely wrong when they go to rescue him and they are captured. It's a great reversal. In this scene they torture Van Meer to get the information about the secret clause, and because this is a 1940s movie where they couldn't pull a HOSTEL and use some power tools on the old guy, they do something very clever. They prepare to torture Van Meer, and the camera pans away to the other terrorists... who look away in HORROR as Van Meer screams off screen. Whatever they are doing to him, it makes the bad guys want to puke. There's an action scene here where they rescue Van Meer, but the cool thing is a “How Did They Do That?” shot of ffoilliott jumping out a window, and in one shot (no cuts) we see him fall out a window, rip through an awning, and race down the sidewalk. And it's George Sanders – movie star – not some stuntman. How did they do it? Well, it was an articulated dummy that goes out the window and rips through the awning, and the ripped awning covers the dummy as Sanders races out and down the sidewalk – his face right there for the camera to see. These are the kind of imaginative tricks that didn't cost a lot of money, but just looked amazing on camera. You could do them today in a low budget film.




Plane Shot Down: The ultimate set piece in this film is a Pan Am Airliner from London to the USA being shot down. This is one of the greatest scenes in cinema, and was swiped by Robert Zemeckis for CASTAWAY. One of those “How Did They Do That?” scenes. Jones and ffoilliott are in the coach section of the plane, Fisher and Carol are in the first class section, when an enemy battleship starts firing at them! This is a passenger plane! The plane is hit and starts going down... and we end up with a full scales disaster movie that rivals anything Hollywood has put out since. Not some little scene, this is massive. First we have the drama of the plane being fired on, when the United States is not involved in the war at this time – we are supposed to be neutral. People on the plane are *complaining* instead of panicking... until the plane gets hit and starts to go down. You know those live vests that are supposed to be under your seat in case of the unlikely event of a water landing? People are grabbing them, because they are in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. One woman says that she refuses to put on the life jacket, they're silly... and then is shot dead when the enemy ship continues to fire on them! Okay – panic in the passenger section...




In the cockpit – the two pilots try their best to land the plane on the water, but they know it's not going to be a Miracle On The Hudson – they are coming in too fast. Now we get one of the most amazing shots in cinema history: without a cut, we are in the cockpit – water coming closer and closer and closer – and then we hit the water... and the cockpit window shatters and water rushes inside the cockpit and floods the interior. No cuts. Way before CGI and any type of FX that can make fake water look real. What you see on film actually happened! Sort of. The cockpit window was a movie screen that they showed the ocean getting closer and closer on. So you could see the pilots in the cockpit and the ocean getting closer all in the same shot. Then, without cutting, the plane hits the water and it bursts through the window. Okay, we have that movie of the ocean getting closer – and the movie projected on the window/screen shows them *hitting the water*... and that's when they empty a freakin' tank of water through the window – ripping the screen (as if it's glass) and flooding the cockpit. All one shot – no cuts!

Hey, but that's still the beginning of the sequence!







The whole interior of the plane floods! As the water rises, passengers have to find pockets of air near the ceiling as they make their way to the back of the plane (where there is more air... for now). Our four characters and all of the others struggle to get out of the plane. Doors are jammed. They find suitcases and slam them against a window until they break it... then they have to climb out – careful of the jagged glass and the crashing waves – to the roof of the plane. Some passengers die. Carol almost gets washed away as she climbs out – some stuntwoman was probably bruised badly, slammed against the side of the plane by the waves and almost torn off the side into the ocean (some huge water tank at the studio). The handful of survivors (including our four) get to the top of the plane...

Hey, but there's still more to come!






They realize the body of the plane is sinking, but one of the wings – which has been torn off during impact – is still floating. So they dive onto the wing before the plane body sinks! Most of them have to swim to the wing, and not all of them make it. The ocean is a volcano of waves. Our four and some others make it onto the wing... and the wing begins to sink! Too many people!

Then some other stuff happens...

Speeches: I probably have some Script Tip where I warn against speeches in screenplays. It's not that speeches are *bad*, it's that much of the time what a writer has isn't really a speech, it's just some guy talking forever with no one replying. It's supposed to be a conversation, supposed to be *dialogue*, but ends up one person talking. An actual speech is fine – as long as it's exciting enough to sustain its length. The soliloquy from HAMLET? Great speech! Write something like that and everyone will love it. That speech about the gold watch in PULP FICTION? Amazing! Write something like that and people will call you a genius. But just some boring stuff that drags on and on? No thank you. Bores the crap out of me in real life, and isn't any more exciting on screen... in fact – it's worse.

But FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT has some great speeches. The first great speech is from Carol, and it's part of a great example of leading the audience. When Jones meets Carol, he thinks that she's the PR Girl for Fisher's Peace Group and flirts with her like crazy. When the meeting begins, he tells her to come and sit with him at the press table where they can talk – no one wants to listen to the boring speeches. She sits at the dais in the front of the room near Fisher. Jones keeps sending her notes – trying to pick her up. When the meeting starts, Fisher notes that Mr. Van Meer was called away, but his daughter will be making the keynote speech in his absence. And we see the woman sitting to Fisher's left:




As Fisher continues to talk about his daughter and her qualifications, we keep seeing this woman to his left... and Jones realizes they are in for one heck of a boring speech and tunes out... But when Fisher is finished, the woman to his left starts to stand... but it's just repositioning herself in her chair... and Carol stands. This is a great example of leading the audience – we are sure that the woman to Fisher's left is his daughter, so when Carol stands it's a twist. But the writers had to *create* that woman to Fisher's left to lead us in the wrong direction. Without that woman, it would have been obvious that Carol was his daughter – no other woman on the dais in the right age range. An important part of screenwriting is leading the audience – creating the characters and situations that will make the reader/viewer jump to the wrong conclusion so that the actual conclusion is unexpected. Leading the audience astray is part of our job. If we didn't have that woman who was *not* Fisher's daughter sitting to his left, the scene would have been boring and obvious. This way, Carol being Fisher's daughter is a little twist.

To the speech – Carol stands to make her speech and sees Jones starring at her with puppy-dog eyes and it breaks her concentration... so she works off her notes. Except 50% of her note cards are from Jones asking her out in amusing ways! So she fumbles some more before getting on track with her speech – which uses some of the things that Jones said to her as examples of why they need a Peace Group. This becomes the “mission statement” for Fisher's group, so that we understand why an organization dedicated to peace is needed in this time of impending war. Using some of the things Jones said, makes the speech amusing – and in some ways part of the love story subplot. The speech is over before you know it, and very entertaining.

There's also a little speech by Van Meer in the taxi-cab ride about people feeding the pigeons in the park that is about how those seemingly boring parts of every day life are really what is important.

A great story decisions happens 59 minutes into the film. There is a plot twist and one of the characters we think is a good guy is secretly one of the bad guys. Now, any time the *hero* talks about how bad the badguys are, how they are morally corrupt, etc, it's just going to sound like a bunch of On The Nose speechifying. So the writers give this speech to... the secret bad guy! *We* know they are bad by this point, so while this villain is talking about how vile and evil the villains are, he is really talking about himself. That makes it ironic and interesting – and yet we still get that speech about how bad the badguys are. A great have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too situation, and it actually helps to shade the secret bad guy character! What could have been trite becomes fascinating. I think this is a great technique to put in your toolbox – have the secret villain talk about the villains instead of the hero.

One hour and thirty one minutes in, there's a speech by Van Meer and Fisher and his peace group. It's right before he's tortured, and the situation makes the speech work. If the villains are torturing a man to talk and he gives a great speech, we are cheering for him.

Eight minutes later the secret bad guy is caught and confesses to the people who trusted him – and the confession is emotional. All about having to live a secret life and lie to people who care about him. It's an apology and a confession all rolled into one... and might make you cry. Hey, it's also really some exposition about why he was secretly a bad guy... but you may be a little misty eyed and not realize that.




There's also a fairly clever bit where Jones has been rescued and is on an American ship – they are forbidden to give any information to the press, but are allowed to call a family member to tell them that they are okay. Jones calls his editor – pretending it's his Uncle – and then has what seems to be a conversation with the ship's captain that is really Jones dictating the story to the editor on the other end of the open phone line. This is a big pile of exposition, but because it is being done in a sly and clever way we laugh at the big blocks of facts – Jones is sneaking them right past the ship's captain!

The last speech is a rousing patriotic “let's get in there are fight the Nazis” pro-war speech. Totally political. The producer obviously though we should intervene and help Europe fight the Nazis... and that's the background of the story... but made very clear at the end. Jones is doing a radio broadcast from London when a bombing raid has the radio station people ordering him to the bomb shelter – but he refuses and continues his broadcast to America. When the lights in the radio station go out, he says the lights have gone out here in Europe, but they are shinning bright in America, and we need to bring our light to the rest of the world where it's needed. This speech is so well written you want to enlist! And that is the key to speeches in screenplays – they have to be *great*. They have to rival that HAMLET speech. They have to be as funny and fascinating as that Gold Watch speech from PULP FICTION. The speech itself must be entertaining and amazing – and any spare word needs to be cut.

Human Villain:




One of the great things that happens with the secret bad guy in FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT is that once he has been revealed to the audience we get to see how difficult his decisions are – his actions are against his country and that makes them against some of the country members who are his friends in the film. His actions will hurt people he cares about... and that makes his decisions very difficult to make at times. He is not an evil villain, he is a guy with different political beliefs than those around him who is trying to do what he believes to be the right thing... even though we see that it is wrong. It's important to make sure your villain isn't some cardboard cut-out Snidely Whiplash human cartoon, but a real person. Real people are more frightening than 2D obviously fake villains.

FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT is a fun action thriller that holds up pretty well after all of these years. The characters are engaging and the situations are filled with suspense and a fair amount of humor. All of this, and I never mentioned Robert Benchley's shtick – he plays the previous foreign correspondent to spends his time drinking to excess and whoring around and sending the government's press releases with his name on them as his stories to the newspaper... and his on the wagon and forced to drink milk throughout the film. He has an amusing phone conversation where he says the same phrase again and again, with different emphasis – so it's like a whole conversation using the same words. Lots of fun stuff I couldn't get to in these 6,750 words!

- Bill

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