Dial H for Hitchcock: Hitch and Cary

By 1941 Alfred Hitchcock had achieved startling success in the U.S. with his first two American films, Rebecca and Foreign Correspondent. Both were box office hits and both were nominated for Best Picture/1940, with Rebecca taking the award.

In 1941, Cary Grant was a relatively newly minted top star. He had broken through in 1937 with The Awful Truth, but had much more recently starred in George Cukor's sensational The Philadelphia Story as well as the George Stevens hit Penny Serenade, a film that brought him his first Best Actor nomination.

The director and actor came together for the first time that year on Suspicion. It was the first film that Hitchcock produced as well as directed and, though flawed, it has some brilliant touches. One neat trick was the casting of Cary Grant in an ambiguous role, one of the first in which he portrayed a character with shadowy, menacing facets. The plot concerns a charming rogue who marries a plain-jane heiress. Throughout the film the storyline strongly insinuates that this dapper man is much worse than unreliable and, by the end, may be plotting to kill his wife.

In a 1963 interview, Hitchcock complained to Peter Bogdanovich about Suspicion, blaming the studio for making him change the ending, "...you see, Cary Grant couldn't be a murderer." Years later New York Times critic Elvis Mitchell observed that the ending destroyed the film "...by negating what has come up until that point." Regardless, the film was a success, garnering Oscar nominations and a Best Actress award for Joan Fontaine.

Five years and World War II came and went before the two men worked together again. In the intervening years Grant had made half a dozen pictures and gotten another Best Actor nod. During that period Hitchcock had also made a half-dozen films and earned two Best Director nominations.

Their second film was Notorious (1946), one of the most acclaimed of Hitchcock's films and one of Cary Grant's most complex performances. A true masterpiece, Notorious is another perfect showcase of the director's technical genius, includes a textbook example of the "MacGuffin" plot device and contains some of the best performances in any of his films; Grant and his co-stars Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains, Louis Calhern and Leopoldine Konstantin all stand out. Critic James Agee shrewdly perceived the "cultivated, clipped puzzled-idealist brutality" in Grant's characterization of agent Devlin. Notorious was a huge box office success, Rains earned a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination and Ben Hecht's screenplay was also nominated.

Nearly a decade would pass until Hitchcock and Grant collaborated again. The year was 1955, and Grant had been moving away from the sort of roles that were his trademark. Among the parts he'd been playing were the harried suburban husband in Mr. Blanding Builds His Dream House (1948) and the quirky middle-aged chemist in Monkey Business (1952). Hitchcock's career had suffered a decline following Notorious but he rebounded forcefully with Strangers on a Train (1951) and most recently enjoyed the enormous box-office success of Rear Window (1954).

With Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief (1955), Cary Grant returned to type as 'John Robie the Cat' and remained there for most of the rest of his career.

Alfred Hitchcock often referred to To Catch a Thief as "champagne," and it was a bubbly, stimulating confection. The Riviera and Grace Kelly were never more beautiful than in this VistaVision/Technicolor fantasy, and Hitchcock's fine, frothy tale of suspense, romance and double-entendres became a smash hit that was nominated for three Oscars, with Robert Burks taking one home for Best Cinematography.

The final pairing of Hitchcock and Grant was North by Northwest (1959), a spectacular ultimate-Hitchcock thrill-ride leavened with clever comic moments and a tricky romance. Grant stars as a very sophisticated innocent man on the run. It is the most popular of the films Hitchcock and Grant made together and was the one, Grant said, that fans mentioned to him more than any other. Besides being a blockbuster, North by Northwest was Oscar-nominated for film editing, art direction and Ernest Lehman's screenplay.

Hitchcock was approaching the twilight of his career at this point, though he still had one of his very best films, Psycho (1960), ahead of him. Grant was also winding down but his biggest box office hit, Operation Petticoat (1959), would be his next project, and the "most popular Hitchcock film Hitchcock never made," Stanley Donen's Charade (1963), was yet to come. Grant would retire in 1966 and, though Hitchcock reportedly wanted him for Torn Curtain (1965), the actor made Walk Don't Run (1966), his final film, instead.

By the time they worked on their last collaboration Cary Grant, not an especially trusting man, completely trusted Alfred Hitchcock and would follow whatever advice the director gave him because, as Grant put it, "he was always right."

For Hitchcock's part he, who was not so very fond of actors, would look back and call Cary Grant "...the only actor I ever loved..."

Though neither of these two film giants ever won a competitive Academy Award, Hitchcock was honored with the Irving Thalberg Award in 1968 and Grant received a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1970.

Dial H for Hitchcock: Foreign Correspondent...an underrated gem

In 1941 Alfred Hitchcock became one of a select few who have directed more than one film nominated for Best Picture in the same year. What makes this especially significant in Hitchcock's case is that the two of his films nominated for the 1940 award were his very first Hollywood movies: Rebecca and Foreign Correspondent.

Rebecca won the golden statuette, one of nine nominations and two wins, and it remains highly respected today. Foreign Correspondent was nominated for six Oscars but eventually fell into a relative obscurity. Though not one of the director's ultimate tours de force, it is nevertheless a well-made classic that deserves recognition.

The story is set on the eve of World War II. A newspaper publisher (Harry Davenport) is fed up with the fluff his correspondents in Europe have been sending back. He decides to assign an ambitious crime reporter (Joel McCrea) to London in hopes of getting the real story as events unfold. The intrepid reporter eagerly pursues his assignment and in the process uncovers an espionage ring, befriends a trusty pair of cohorts (George Sanders and Robert Benchley) and falls in love with a beautiful woman (Laraine Day).

The film harkens back to Hitchcock's earlier British films and connects with his later films in various ways. As with The 39 Steps, The Lady Vanishes and other of his British movies, foreign intrigue drives the plot (a scenario Hitchcock returned to several times on later films including Saboteur, Notorious and North by Northwest). The director's penchant for 'doubles' also surfaces here (the diplomat and his imposter, McCrea's character has two names, Herbert Marshall's character leads a double life). Hitchcock also makes effective use of landmark locations, another trademark device.

Foreign Correspondent is a showcase of Hitchcock's cinematic artistry, particularly his mastery of the set-piece. One of the film's most striking features is a series of famous set-pieces that established a high-water mark to that point and set the standard for his later films.

The first involves a political assassination on the steps of Amsterdam Square during a downpour. The sudden, shocking murder is followed by pursuit of the assassin through a visual sea of bobbing umbrellas and into rain-washed city streets.

The next takes place in the Dutch countryside, where McCrea and two others have tracked the assassin. As McCrea takes in the scene from a Frankenstein-ian windmill, he notices that one of the windmills is turning backward, against the wind, and this tips him off that things are amiss. He moves in closer to investigate...

A third is set back in London, where McCrea agrees to take on a bodyguard who is actually a killer (Edmund Gwenn). This jovial henchman repeatedly puts the reporter in harm's way, and their final harrowing scene together takes place in the tower of Westminster Cathedral. The entire sequence is both amusing and terrifying.

Finally, and most dramatically, is the crash of a transatlantic clipper into the sea. Devised long before the advent of sophisticated special effects and CGI, the scene was magnficently and simply conceived. The crash is viewed from the back of a cockpit set. Footage filmed from a stunt plane diving over the ocean was rear-projected onto rice paper at the front of the set. Behind the rice paper were water tanks with chutes aimed at the cockpit windshield so that, at the precise moment Hitchcock pushed a button, water would burst through the paper giving the effect that the plane is crashing nose-first into the ocean. The action surrounding the crash encompasses the chaos and hysteria aboard the clipper when it comes under attack as well as the struggle of passengers to escape the sinking plane and survive on a floating wing.

Though Hitchcock's first choice for the lead was Gary Cooper, Joel McCrea hits all the right notes as the dedicated news hound, a slightly rumpled American everyman. He is ably assisted by Sanders as a wry and eccentric newsman, and Benchley as another quirky reporter. Edmund Gwenn's turn as the affable would-be killer is marvelous; Albert Basserman was Oscar-nominated for his role as an abducted diplomat. Herbert Marshall delivers his usual fine performance as the head of an international group and Harry Davenport is always an asset. Laraine Day is fetching as Marshall's daughter and McCrea's love interest, but doesn't bring much more to the part. In this case either of Hitchcock's original choices, Barbara Stanwyck and Joan Fontaine, would've better filled the bill.

Foreign Correspondent has sometimes been called a propaganda film, and foremost among those making the claim was Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. Although McCrea's final speech is an impassioned wake up plea to America (and was reportedly added by producer Walter Wanger), it hardly characterizes the film as a whole. In my view, Foreign Correspondent is one very fine brew of mystery, suspense, romance and wit.

What do you think? Love it or hate it, take it or leave it..what are your impressions of Foreign Correspondent?