(Part of my discussion on the films of Turner Classic Movies’ 31 Days of Oscar)
Destination: Amsterdam and London
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: Joel McCrae, Laraine Day, Herbert Marshall, and George Sanders
Running Length: 120 minutes
Genre: thriller, mystery
Playing on TCM: Monday, February 6th, 2012. 8:00 PM (EST)
Can I just take this moment to say how much I love George Sanders? The British actor always played the indifferent cad with the silky voice (you’ll have heard his voice as Shere Khan the Tiger in The Jungle Book). If you aren’t familiar with his work, I encourage you check out Rebecca, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. And that’s just his work from the 1940s – his career spanned forty years.
In today’s film, Foreign Correspondent, Sanders comes very close to stealing the film by playing a character with the delightfully absurd name of ffolliet (“With a double ‘F’…. They’re at the beginning. Both small ‘F’s.”).
Foreign Correspondent tells the story of an American reporter (the ever handsome, Joel McCrae) trying to investigate and expose the work of enemy 
spies in England. When the investigation takes him to Amsterdam, he witnesses the supposed-assassination of a Dutch diplomat and he enlists the help of Carol Fisher (Laraine Day) and Scott ffolliet (George Sanders) to get to the bottom of the plot in pre-WWII Europe.
I saw this film for the first time a couple of years ago and it was so refreshing to see a great “new-to-me” Hitchcock film (and there I was stupidly thinking I had seen all the important ones). While the film missed out on the Best Picture Oscar in 1941 (to Hitchcock’s other masterpiece Rebecca, no less!), it is a wonderful example of the director’s early work in Hollywood. 
There are so many memorable scenes in this film, but my favorite scene begins after the assassination in Amsterdam. The shooter has just driven out of the capital followed closely by McCrae, Day and Sanders. Suddenly, the car they are chasing disappears. McCrae, left by the others, follows his trail into a windmill and thus begins a deliciously Hitchcockian scene. Inside the windmill, Joel creeps about getting his first glimpse of the masterminds behind the plot. We get to watch the whole scene as if we too are hiding in the shadows with Joel. Check out the masterful scene below:
Watch it on TCM tonight at 8:00 PM (EST).
I want to watch this one!
“Foreign Correspondent” has plenty of excitement, humor and suspense, along with some of Hitchcock’s best set pieces.
It does! And some of the most expensive for the time – I mean that plane crash!
It’s such a terrific film – Hitch keeps the action moving in every scene. I think Sanders is adorable as a nice guy in this film, but, as you mention, he’s really known for his villains. For fans, and also for those not familiar with him, I would definitely add THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY (1946) as another must-see movie he’s in.