November 17 movie: Foreign Correspondent. I think this is Hitchcock's most underrated movie. It never shows up in lists of his great films, but it's one of my favorite Hitchcock movies, top 3 maybe. Joel McCrea and George Sanders play journalists who get caught up in a plot to steal British government secrets on the eve of WWII; Herbert Marshall and Laraine Day play a father and daughter involved in a peace movement which has been infiltrated by spies.
The great strength of the movie is the acting by Marshall and Sanders. Their characters are the most complicated and they do the most with them. Sanders in particular is wonderful as always. I love McCrea too, and he's great as the likable everyman who finds himself in the middle of intrigue. Edmund Gwenn has an unlikely turn as a nefarious character. There are also a couple of terrific set-pieces: one inside a windmill, and one on a plane that is just terrifying.
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