Foreign Correspondent 1940 Ok.ru

[Juliane Bari]

TheDay Will Dawn, released in the USA as The Avengers, is a 1942 British war film set in Norway during World War II. It stars Ralph Richardson, Deborah Kerr, Hugh Williams and Griffith Jones, and was directed by Harold French from a script written by Anatole de Grunwald, Patrick Kirwan and Terence Rattigan, based on a story by Frank Owen.[1] The music by Richard Addinsell was performed by the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Muir Mathieson.

Following the Invasion of Poland in September 1939, the former horse racing-correspondent Colin Metcalfe is placed as a foreign correspondent in neutral Norway. Eight months later he meets a Norwegian fisherman, Captain Alstad, in a sailors' bar, where a scuffle breaks out between British and Norwegian sailors (singing "Rule Britannia", egged on by Metcalfe) and German ones (singing the Nazi Party anthem the "Horst-Wessel-Lied").[2] Alstad takes him aboard his boat during a sea voyage in Norway's territorial waters, during which they sight the Altmark and are fired upon by a German U-boat, despite Norway's neutrality. They then come back to his home port of Langedal, and Metcalfe goes to Oslo to report this to the British embassy there, despite the best efforts of the German Kommandant and the German-sympathising local police chief Ottoman Gunter. There Metcalfe meets Frank Lockwood en route back to England from the Winter War in Finland. It was Lockwood who had got him the foreign correspondent job at the outbreak of war, but he now passes on the news to Metcalfe that he has been fired from it for sailing out with the fisherman rather than staying on dry land where the paper can contact him. Metcalfe informs the embassy, and also warns his paper of signs that a German war on Norway is imminent. Alstad's daughter Kari (who had accompanied them on their voyage) also meets him to tell him of suspicious German merchant ships at Bergen which her father suspects have troops on board.

Back in Britain as the Blitz begins, Metcalfe is persuaded not to join up and instead to start a press campaign for the public to make economies on the Home Front to help win the Battle of the Atlantic. Just about to set out on it, he is called upon by the Admiralty to be parachute-dropped back into Langedal,[3] sabotage a camouflaged U-boat base nearby, and escape across the border into neutral Sweden. On landing, he is spotted and pursued by the Germans, but manages to escape and gain shelter. There he finds that Alstad has been interned by the Germans, and Kari has brought shame on herself by getting engaged to the traitorous Gunter. However, when at a tense "Norwegian-German friendship dance" the Germans arrive to demand Metcalfe's papers, Kari saves him by inciting a riot and hiding him at her house. There she reveals she only took on the engagement to obtain her father's release.

Alstad is released and agrees to help Metcalfe to signal to British bombers with torches to guide them in on their raid on it, and Kari and Metcalfe bid a romantic farewell. The signalling is successful and the base destroyed, but Alstad is killed by a German patrol. Metcalfe returns to tell Kari the news, just as Gunter and the Germans take eight random hostages who will be shot if the British spy they are sheltering is not given up. Metcalfe overhears this, and gives himself up. Gunter returns to Kari to try to save her from the firing squad she too will face for sheltering the spy, but she refuses and is locked up with the hostages, though Gunter shows her the kindness of not separating her from Metcalfe. They prepare to die, and the first party for the firing squad are taken out, but then a British commando raid arrives. In the chaos Gunter is shot by the Kommandant as the latter makes a hasty escape, and the hostages are all freed unharmed. The raiders capture the town and its German garrison and then leave almost immediately, taking Metcalfe, Kari, the hostages and their families to safety in England.[4]

David Parkinson gave the film three out of five stars in the Radio Times, and wrote, "Markedly less restrained than many other British tales of wartime resistance, this well-meaning flag-waver is far more effective than the majority of have-a-go Hollywood movies on the same theme...what sets this apart is a remarkable cast of British stalwarts, not one of whom puts a foot wrong. Special mention should be made, however, of Deborah Kerr, who lends quiet courage to an unrewarding romantic part, and Francis L Sullivan, who makes a most malevolent Nazi".[6]

The reviewer for The Movie Scene rated the film similarly, although finding it "incredibly dated," but went on to say that it, "does feature a good storyline which is well knit together. It is still entertaining and you can see how it would have served its purpose of rallying British audiences back in the 1940s."[7]

Foreign Correspondent was Hitchcock's second Hollywood production after leaving the United Kingdom in 1939 (the first was Rebecca) and had an unusually large number of writers: Robert Benchley, Charles Bennett, Harold Clurman, Joan Harrison, Ben Hecht, James Hilton, John Howard Lawson, John Lee Mahin, Richard Maibaum, and Budd Schulberg, with Bennett, Harrison, Hilton and Benchley the only writers credited in the finished film. It was based on Vincent Sheean's political memoir Personal History (1935), the rights to which were purchased by producer Walter Wanger for $10,000.

In mid-August 1939, just before the outbreak of World War II, the editor of the New York Morning Globe, Mr. Powers (Harry Davenport), sends crime reporter John Jones, using the pen name "Huntley Haverstock" (Joel McCrea), to Europe to report on conditions there.

Jones/Haverstock shares a cab with Van Meer on the way to the luncheon. He peppers him with questions about the impending war, but Van Meer evades answering. Once at the event, Jones becomes smitten with Carol (Laraine Day) who has some uncertain role at the meeting. He invites her to sit at his table saying none of the reporters will listen to the speeches. A charming host, Stephen Fisher (Herbert Marshall), the leader of the Universal Peace Party, makes the announcement that their keynote speaker, Van Meer, has taken ill and won't appear. In his stead, the host has his daughter, Carol, speak. Jones realizes he has inadvertently insulted the woman he now adores.

While Carol and ffolliott go for the police, Jones searches the windmill and finds Van Meer alive, but heavily drugged. All Van Meer can manage to convey is that the man shot in front of witnesses earlier was an imposter. Jones narrowly escapes the windmill to tell the police that Van Meer is alive. When they all return to the scene with authorities, Van Meer and his kidnappers are gone. Later, back at Jones's hotel room in Amsterdam, two spies posing as police officers arrive to kidnap him. When he suspects who they really are, he escapes out of his hotel bathroom window. He runs into Carol again.

Jones and Carol board a British ship to England. Amidst a furious storm, Jones proposes marriage to her, which she accepts. In England, they go to Carol's father's house, where Jones sees Krug (Eduardo Ciannelli), whom he recognizes from the windmill as the operative running the assassination and kidnapping. Fisher and Krug realize Jones knows too much, and Krug convinces Fisher that he must be killed. Fisher tells Jones he is in danger and offers a bodyguard to protect him. The bodyguard, Rowley (Edmund Gwenn), takes Jones to the top of Westminster Cathedral tower ostensibly to ditch anyone following them and to show Jones the view. Suddenly, the bodyguard tries to shove Jones off the tower, going over the side to his own death, instead.

Jones and ffolliott are convinced that Fisher is a traitor, so they come up with a plan: Jones will take Carol to Cambridge, and ffolliott will pretend she has been kidnapped, in order to force Fisher to divulge Van Meer's location. Carol agrees to go, thinking that the purpose of their trip is to protect John by getting him out of London. When she overhears John booking two adjoining rooms at an inn, she believes that Jones has tricked her into leaving London for a premarital sexual encounter. She returns home alone and earlier than ffolliott expected, foiling his attempt to extract Van Meer's location from her father. ffolliott then trails Fisher to a closed hotel where Van Meer is being held prisoner. He is captured at gunpoint and brought into the room where the spy ring is holding a drugged Van Meer, torturing him with bright lights and loud jazz music. Fisher fails to persuade Van Meer to reveal the details of a secret clause in a treaty, Clause 27 (the movie's MacGuffin[2]). Fisher then has Van Meer physically tortured until he begins to recite the clause, which would be triggered if Germany goes to war. ffolliot starts to fight Fisher's thugs to interrupt Van Meer, and then escapes. Jones and a fellow reporter arrive, and the three rescue Van Meer. Fisher flees. Van Meer is taken to a nearby hospital, where he slowly regains consciousness.

Britain and France declare war on Germany. Jones and ffolliott follow the Fishers onto a Short S.30 Empire flying boat to America. When Fisher intercepts a telegram intended for ffolliott, telling him that Van Meer has recovered and identified Fisher as his kidnapper, Fisher realizes he will soon be captured and returned to England. He confesses his treasonous behavior to Carol, who already suspects the truth but promises to stand by him. Jones pleads with Carol to rekindle their affair. Seconds later, the aircraft is shelled by a German destroyer and crashes into the ocean. The survivors perch on the floating wing of the downed aircraft. Realizing that the wing cannot support everyone, Fisher slips into the ocean to drown, dying for his cause while also sacrificing himself so the rest will survive.

An American ship rescues the survivors. The captain refuses to allow the reporters to file their stories using the ship's communications, citing American neutrality in the war. Still, Jones, ffolliott, and Carol surreptitiously communicate the story by radio-telephone to Mr. Powers. Jones returns to England and, with Carol at his side, becomes a successful war correspondent. During a live radio broadcast, he describes London being bombed, urging Americans to "keep those lights burning" as they go dark in the studio.

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