Sightlines · reception
How Foreign Correspondent was received
1940 · Alfred Hitchcock · Foreign Correspondent on Sightlines
The arc
A hit in 1940 with six Oscar nominations including Best Picture — which it lost to Hitchcock's own Rebecca, released the same year. It's spent decades in Rebecca's shadow, but cinephiles now routinely rank it among the best of his British-to-Hollywood transition, powered by a handful of all-timer set pieces.
What’s debated
Fans keep arguing over whether the tacked-on flag-waving finale — pure pro-intervention propaganda added as France fell — cheapens the film or is its most fascinating time-capsule feature.
Its footprint
The assassination viewed from above through a sea of bobbing umbrellas is one of the most imitated images in thriller history, and Joseph Goebbels himself grudgingly called the film 'a masterpiece of propaganda.'
Where it stands
The perpetual 'most underrated Hitchcock' pick — the one cinephiles push on people who think 1940 Hitchcock begins and ends with Rebecca.
Did you know? Gary Cooper turned down the lead (thrillers were beneath an A-lister then), a decision he later told Hitchcock he regretted — Joel McCrea took the part instead.