Foreign Correspondent (1940) Demonstrates How Easy it Was to Do Crimes 80 Years Ago
This issue is part of a month-long Alfred Hitchcock marathon I’m doing as a fundraiser for The Women’s Fund of Greater Birmingham! I will be watching the Master of Suspense’s final 30 films (and writing a poem about each one over on Facebook), so I will be writing about four of those films here. If we’re not Facebook friends, you can donate to The Women’s Fund here.
Note: This issue contains minor spoilers for Foreign Correspondent. As in, a thing that happens in the first act of the film. I don’t think it’s a big deal in terms of ruining the movie, but you have been forewarned.
My ladyfriend and I were watching John Mulaney’s New in Town comedy special the other day, which is very funny. It’s also very applicable to many of Alfred Hitchcock’s older films.
Specifically, his bit about how easy it was to commit crimes nearly a century ago. As I’ve said, it’s very funny, but here’s the gist: “It was really easy to get away with murder before they knew about DNA. It was ridiculously easy.” And also: “Here’s how easy it was to get away with bank robbery back in the 30s. As long as you weren’t still there when the police arrived, you had a 99% chance of getting away with it.”
And I couldn’t stop thinking about this bit as I was watching Foreign Correspondent. Do you ever find yourself watching an older film, and something happens, and you think to yourself “Wow, it would never happen like that today!” or “Wow, if that happened today, this movie would be 15 minutes long”? That’s how I found myself.
Don’t get me wrong: Foreign Correspondent is a very good movie! It is a journalism movie, which makes it near and dear to my heart. It is also perhaps one of Hitchcock’s most American films. (I almost said “most patriotic films,” but he is not an American, and also I don’t mean “American” in a jingoistic way. We were allies back then, after all.)
But it hinges upon a plot point that would be very silly in a modern film.
Here’s the story: An American reporter, Huntley Haverstock (his real name is John Jones, but his editor decides that his name is bad and gives him a new one, which is incredible), is sent to Europe to cover the looming threat of a world war. His first assignment is to interview a nice Dutch man named Van Meer (he is not given a first name?), who is one of the leading diplomats associated with the Universal Peace Party, which seems like a very nice thing to be.
But when Van Meer attends a conference in Amsterdam and Haverstock meets him there to interview him...Van Meer is murdered! Oh no! Except he isn’t really murdered. Haverstock chases Van Meer’s assassin into the Dutch countryside, where he finds the real Van Meer being held hostage inside of a windmill (which is a very Dutch thing to do—if you’re a criminal, at least).
How did these kidnappers get away with this bait-and-switch, you might ask? Well, they really did shoot a man in Amsterdam—the act took place among a crowd of people in front of a prominent building.
But the man they shot was...an imposter! Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Well, that seems a bit implausible, especially back then.” Guess what? You are correct. It is highly implausible.
First of all, Van Meer looks like this. He is not exactly the most nondescript person, especially in his visage. So either these criminals found somebody who looks just like Van Meer, which seems very unlikely, or they had access to super-advanced prosthetic makeup, which also seems very unlikely. Those are really the only two scenarios! I am not buying either one.
You’re also asking me to believe that it was not immediately discovered that the murdered man was an imposter. If it was in the heat of the moment in a crowd, sure, I could see people mistaking this imposter for Van Meer. But what exactly did they do with this body? Did they not ask Van Meer’s wife or his next of kin to come and identify the body? Wouldn’t that have been standard procedure, especially in 1940? Were they not planning a funeral for Van Meer? This man was a prominent public figure! Who is running the show here?
It also amuses me to think about this Van-Meer-esque imposter. I wonder what mission he was given. If he was simply a lookalike, did these criminals hire a harmless old man to...pretend to be a prominent public figure and attend a Universal Peace Party event? How did he think this would go? Did they tell him he’d only need to descend the stairs and wait for instructions? Did they lie to him? (The prosthetics idea, while wildly implausible, is even funnier when you consider this particular thing; imagine being told to impersonate a famous person and go to a public place and not thinking it was fishy as hell.)
We never learn the identity of this imposter, because Van Meer is alive and the world is on the verge of war and there’s even more trickery about. But I will think of him often, mostly because he was so easy to murder, and so easy to forget about.
Foreign Correspondent is now streaming on HBO Max and the Criterion Channel, and it’s available to rent elsewhere.