Jingi No Hakaba (Graveyard Of Honor) 1975

Nihilism is a difficult concept to capture in the gangster genre. The gangster film itself is most often a vehicle used by filmmakers to challenge the tenets of capitalism or revel in the kinetic energy of the caper. The yakuza films that Kinji Fukasaku directed between the 1960’s and 70’s are famous for attacking Japan’s rapid attempts at modernization but what set them apart from the rest of the yakuza-eiga being made at that time was the bleak and nihilistic mood that permeated every frame of his films. Just as it is impossible to make an anti-war film without inadvertently glorifying the violence in combat it is equally difficult to make a gangster film that doesn’t in some way celebrate the hipness of the criminal underworld. The jitsuroku-eiga pictures that Fukasaku directed though come the closest to demystifying the aura of the yakuza. In films like Bakuto Gaijin Butai (Sympathy For The Underdog), Gendai Yakuza: Hito-Kiri Yota (Street Mobster), and the Jingi Naki Tatakai (Battles Without Honor And Humanity) series Fukasaku pointed his camera at Japan’s underbelly and brought into focus a world populated by people incapable of adjusting to the new reality of postwar Japan where money trumps honor and loyalty is a commodity you can purchase in bulk if you ally yourself with just the right people.

After the completion of the epic five-part Jingi Naki Tatakai (Battles Without Honor And Humanity) series Kinji Fukasaku could have rested on his laurels and churned out cookie-cutter genre pictures for the rest of his career and still guaranteed himself a place in the pantheon of great Japanese directors, he chose instead to follow up his yakuza epic with a nihilistic masterpiece titled Jingi No Hakaba (Graveyard Of Honor). The film starred Tetsuya Watari as the real-life yakuza character Rikio Ishikawa. Unlike the yakuza protagonists found in earlier Fukasaku films, many of them starring the legendary Bunta Sugawara, the character of Rikio Ishikawa is an unforgivable psychopath. Whereas in the earlier jitsuroku-eiga pictures the yakuza protagonists would fight under the banner of avenging a fallen friend or were themselves a victim of the inherent inequalities of a newly prosperous Japan there is no rhyme or reason to why the character of Rikio Ishikawa does the things he does. It’s a telling detail that the voiceover narrator in the film makes it a point to tell the audience that Ishikawa has become a legend in the criminal underworld and that stories of his exploits are still whispered about in yakuza circles. In effect Ishikawa has transformed from a mere man to an elemental spirit. Ishikawa, in the film, embodies the unbridled violent potential of the yakuza. Without clan ties or the bonds of brotherhood to hold him back Ishikawa is not hindered by the façade of social propriety and is ruled only by his pleasure principle, psychologically speaking he is all id without the complementary ego and super-ego to curb his self-destructive tendencies.

Fukasaku turns the character of Rikio Ishikawa into a death angel. Every person that he has some relationship with seems to inevitably become a victim of violence. Unlike typical crime pictures where you have a loose cannon cop, who plays by his own set of rules, wreaking havoc throughout the film all in a vain attempt to clean up the streets Fukasaku foregoes the clichés of the Dirty Harry pictures and places the responsibility of avenging angel on the shoulders of a psychopathic junky. In effect what better way to illustrate the violent, exploitative, and cruel nature of the yakuza and the ludicrousness of the yakuza code itself then through the eyes of a fellow member of the caste. Whereas the yakuza protagonist of the ninkyo-eiga would never be caught dead without a neatly pressed suit, a freshly shaved face, and finely quaffed hair Ishikawa is the antithesis of this. You would never mistake Ishikawa for the baby-faced tough guys played by Akira Kobayashi or Jo Shishido. Tetsuya Watari plays the character of Rikio Ishikawa as a man with a constant enigmatic expression on his face. Unable to read the motives behind his actions Ishikawa becomes otherworldly. In fact during the scene where Ishikawa goes and kills his friend Imai he dons a long black rain slicker, in effect connecting Rikio to a grim reaper. And it’s interesting to note that in the film Ishikawa seems imbued with a supernatural aura living through several violent attempts on his life as if some force were keeping Ishikawa, the tainted angel, alive till he completed the job handed down to him.

A running motif that Fukasaku incorporates throughout the film is the image of a dangling red balloon. This motif is connected to Ishikawa, who in the film even describes himself as a balloon rising higher and higher until he finally bursts. It’s obvious that the string tethering the balloon to the earth is meant to be representative of Ishikawa’s life. To illustrate the connection between Ishikawa’s life and the balloon string during the final confrontation with the Kawada gang at the cemetery Fukasaku slows down the action and draws attention to one of Ishikawa’s attackers accidentally slicing an adjacent red balloon free from its anchor followed by juxtaposing shots of Rikio being savagely attacked and footage of the newly freed balloon slowly ascending to the sky linking the balloon’s upward flight with that of a soul trying to escape from its mortal coil. Ultimately though what is Fukasaku trying to say with the red balloon motif? Are the balloon’s attempts to escape from the earth meant to have some spiritual significance? To try and answer that question it is pertinent to look towards the field of psychology. During psychology’s infancy Freud postulated that human beings are driven by two instincts: Eros, which is representative of the life instinct, and Thanatos, which is conversely a person’s death drive. As a psychological concept Freud theorized that in opposition to our need to create and nurture Thanatos is the opposing force undoing all that we’ve built. This self-destructive behavior is a natural human inclination to return to a pure inanimate state where there exists no happiness but also where we are free from the burden of suffering. The red balloon struggling to get free can be seen as a summation of all of Ishikawa’s actions in the film, his cruelty was a mask to hide some unknown trauma and the pain he inflicts to those around him can be seen as attempts to get those who cared about him to retaliate and finally end his suffering.

Although ostensibly a gangster picture Fukasaku never shied away from mixing genres and adds a romantic subplot to the Ishikawa narrative. Of course the romance in the story is anything but conventional. Chieko, the woman who has the misfortune of capturing Rikio’s attention, is more victim than love interest. Contrary to the gun molls found in other gangster pictures Chieko is an unlikely spouse and accomplice. Her passive and demure personality contrasts with other female characters in the film that are relegated to roles like prostitute or junky. Her first meeting with Rikio involved Ishikawa breaking into her room and, under the threat of death, forcing her to hide him from the cops and stash the loot he stole from “third nationals”. Subsequent encounters afterwards followed a similar pattern of abuse and exploitation with Rikio either raping Chieko or forcing her to prostitute herself to make money for him. And yet with all the brutality that Chieko must endure from Rikio there are moments of odd tenderness that he shares with her like when he gently wipes the blood from her mouth after one of her tubercular coughing fits or during one of the sickest romantic gestures that cinema has to offer Ishikawa consumes one of his wife’s cremated bones. The act itself is done out of a need to cajole the boss of the Kawada gang to give him money to start his own gang, but Ishikawa’s action also shines a light on his inability to communicate his feelings. Consuming Chieko’s bones became Rikio’s final way of possessing her. Throughout the film whether in the company of his friends, like Imai, or his wife, Chieko, Ishikawa always exhibited the traits of an emotionally stunted personality. His malignant narcissism has kept him from not only being able to read other people’s emotions but also contributed to his anti-social behavior. The consumption of Chieko’s bones to the average person may be seen as strange, but for a man who lacks empathy this is the closest thing to him telling his wife that he loves her.

Typical of the films of Kinji Fukasaku during that period Jingi No Hakaba (Graveyard Of Honor) makes extensive use of color filters, sepia tone, Dutch angles, photographic slideshow, handy-cam shots, freeze frames, slow motion, and documentary footage all to tell, what many would derisively call, a genre picture. Fukasaku and his cinematographer Hanjiro Nakazawa shot the picture in a mockumentary style utilizing real locations and were as true to the facts as cinematically possible. Watching the film one can’t help but feel a connection between Fukasaku’s grim nihilistic jitsuroku-eiga picture and Woody Allen’s directorial debut Take the Money and Run. Although the two films are from opposite sides of the genre spectrum both can be classified ostensibly as crime pictures. The only difference being that Woody Allen treats the material as comic fodder while Fukasaku brings out the inherent tabloid sensibilities of the story. Of course that’s not to say that Fukasaku’s yakuza narrative is devoid of comedy. In fact Jingi No Hakaba (Graveyard Of Honor) and Take the Money and Run both stand as perfect examples of Rabelaisian comedy. Like the works of Francois Rabelais Woody Allen and Kinji Fukasaku’s respective films revel in the grotesqueries of contemporary living and both embrace the type of crude and vulgar humor that many comedians dabble in today but few ever really elevate to such absurd proportions. An example of this vulgar absurdity in Fukasaku’s film can be seen during Ishikawa’s standoff with the police. Surrounded on all sides by not only the cops but also the might of the Imai and Kawada gangs, not to mention having to deal with a partner in crime constantly complaining about their short supply of dope. What would have been a routine gun battle explodes into a rock fight as each group tries to capture Ishikawa. Although completely outnumbered it is his opponents that cower in fear as a bloodied Ishikawa charges into battle. The manic activity coming from all the characters in the scene elevates a generic action scene into absolute bedlam and upturns all notions of the brave and stoic yakuza found in the ninkyo-eiga pictures of the past. Rikio Ishikawa is not some knight-errant of the people but rather a feral cat who pounces on the weak. Instead of offering simple solutions by painting Ishikawa as the singular villain in the film Fukasaku tells his audience that in the corrupt world that we live in there are no such things as heroes or villains, but just the dichotomy of exploited and exploiter.

Yakuza Cinema: A Guide For The Uninitiated

The postwar period in Japan saw many changes to society; with the collapse of the former government regime and the destruction of most of the country's industrial infrastructure many people turned to the black market to survive. By 1947 Japan had drawn up a new constitution and although the Emperor was allowed to keep his royal title, power was transferred to the National Diet of Japan. While the newly instituted constitution, mainly authored by the American Occupation Forces, was devoted to establishing a set of fundamental human rights for every citizen regardless of their age, class, or gender the Japanese private sector began to grow and expand in conjunction with several economic policies passed by the new ruling body. With the assistance of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers (SCAP) Japan would, in the span of a decade, rise from the ashes of World War II to become important players on the global stage.

Even during this period of rapid modernization and economic growth the Japanese populace were wary of the new way of life being forced down their throats and began to look back towards their collective past for some sort of heroic archetype that they could model their lives on. Although the samurai was a staple of Japanese cinema just as the cowboy was to American cinema the jidai-geki, period film, was going through its own upheavals during the 1960's. What cinema-goers were looking for was a character that embodied the samurai's code of ethics and yet was grounded in the reality of a society torn between eastern tradition and western capitalism.

In Japanese history the yakuza can trace their origins as far back as 1612 when groups of men called the kabuki-mono, literally translated as the "crazy ones", would wander from town to town in distinct clothing and hairstyles brandishing longswords and committing heinous acts of violence. Of course to many yakuza they saw themselves as having a more refined pedigree and cite the machi-yakko, city servant, as their true ancestors. The machi-yakko were the ordinary citizens of a town with professions as varied as tavern owners, merchants, or itinerant samurais who would be charged with protecting their villages from the kabuki-mono. In reality though yakuza were loyal to no one except their oyabun, crime boss. The oyabun-kobun relationship is the guiding principle within the yakuza hierarchy. The kobun, child role, must pledge loyalty and obedience to the oyabun; this relationship superseded a yakuza's other commitments to their family or to the state, and oftentimes it meant that a kobun's life would be sacrificed so that the oyabun could continue to profit from all the illicit activities that they were involved in.

As a genre of film the yakuza-eiga can be divided into two categories: the ninkyo-eiga and the jitsuroku-eiga. The ninkyo-eiga or "chivalry films" were populated by honorable outlaws caught between the opposing values of giri, duty, and ninjo, compassion. A typical plot for a ninkyo-eiga picture could revolve around a young initiate to a gang who must work under a cruel and despicable oyabun and because of the code of giri the young man must commit several heinous acts that go against his own sense of right and wrong all in the name of yakuza tradition. Justice in the film is only met when the evil oyabun does something so atrocious that the yakuza protagonist can no longer suppress their own humanity, in which case the evil oyabun must die. Of course by pursuing this path of action the yakuza protagonist is doomed to one of two fates; they die in their attempt to kill their evil master or they complete their task and are relegated to spending the rest of their lives in jail. In a ninkyo-eiga the yakuza are martyred knight-errants sacrificing their own lives and happiness to maintain the social order.

By the start of the 1970's though the romanticism of the ninkyo-eiga gave way to the gritty documentary realism of the jitsuroku-eiga. The new breed of yakuza found in the jitsuroku-eiga had shed their identity as honorable outlaws and completely embraced western capitalism. The concepts of giri and ninjo were relics of an unobtainable past and were only referenced by sadistic crime bosses who needed an excuse to get their men to do their dirty work for them. A perfect example of the jitsuroku-eiga can be seen in the work of director Kinji Fukasaku, specifically in the Jingi Naki Tatakai (Battles Without Honor and Humanity) films that he did for Toei studios from 1973-1974. Fukasaku's unsentimental crime pictures held an unflinching light upon the brutality of yakuza life and the inherent hypocrisy of the oyabun-kobun relationship.

Due to the yakuza-eiga's roots in grindhouse cinema the genre is usually relegated to the dustbin or more often than not treated as a curio by more myopic cinephiles. When studying the yakuza-eiga or any genre for that matter it is pertinent to remember Paul Schrader's words in his 1974 Film Comment piece, "Yakuza-Eiga: A Primer", where he wrote: "Genres are not free flights of the imagination. The art of a genre occurs within the strictures. Only when one understands that icons are supposed to be two-dimensional does the study of their shape and form become interesting. Similarly, it is only after one understands - and appreciates - the genre conventions of yakuza-eiga that the study of its themes and styles becomes enlightening...The purpose of genre conventions is first of all functional; each has an assembly-line task to perform. The function of a yakuza plot is to create a web of duties and humanitarian obligations. The function of yakuza characterization is to create characters susceptible to the demands of those obligations. The function of the set pieces is to put flash and filagree into the film so that it will not drag while the web of duties and obligations is being woven." Although the yakuza-eiga is a relatively recent film genre it has developed several unique genre tropes, many related to real-life yakuza rituals:

• The sake-sharing ceremony is a formalized ritual performed to seal bonds of brotherhood between individual yakuza members or as a way to publicly acknowledge an alliance between two opposing families. Films that exploit the dramatic worth of the sake-sharing ceremony usually have plots which revolve around a yakuza protagonist caught between their loyalty to their oyabun and their pledge of brotherhood to another yakuza, usually a member of an opposing gang.

• The yubitsume, a ritual involving the cutting of one's finger as a form of penance, originated with the bakuto, itinerant gamblers, who would amputate their little finger as a way to pay off a gambling debt. In the ninkyo-eiga the ritual becomes an extension of the code of honor that the yakuza themselves believe they live by. By the time of the jitsuroku-eiga though the yubitsume ceremony is stripped down to a simple act of restitution, but this eye for an eye mentality rarely ever brought justice to those who were wronged.

• Irezumi or the ancient Japanese art of tattooing has long been associated with the criminal class in Japan and even when occupation forces legalized the practice of tattooing in 1945 it still maintained that stigma of criminality with many businesses in Japan banning customers who openly sport their tattoos in public. In the yakuza-eiga the full-body tattoos that yakuza don serve as talismans and link them to the warrior tradition. It also helped create a visual dividing line between the yakuza and non-yakuza members of society. Those inked with the elaborate images of dragons, koi, and tengu spirits became the other in a society that values conformity. It dehumanized the yakuza and turned a bunch of reckless thugs into demons that needed vanquishing.

• The aesthetics of death is a topic of great importance in dealing not only with the yakuza-eiga but also when discussing the chambara, samurai film. In the ninkyo-eiga where the distinction between yakuza and samurai can get blurry the final confrontation between the yakuza protagonist and the evil oyabun is a moment of catharsis. A perfect example of this can be seen in Seijun Suzuki's 1965 yakuza picture Irezumi Ichidai (Tattooed Life) where the final set piece is an elaborate explosion of saturated colors, inventive camera angles, and a melange of chambara and yakuza-eiga tropes. By the time of the jitsuroku-eiga though yakuza were swapping their katana's for baseball bats and pistols and the ritual of the duel gave way to the shaky cam poetics of the brawl.

Presently the yakuza-eiga lies dormant. Although there have been stabs at resurrecting it by internationally acclaimed directors like Takeshi Kitano and Takashi Miike its popularity is relegated to a small minority of asian cinema fanatics. With the rise in popularity of the comic book superhero there may not be any room left in the cinema for realistic portrayals of men living on the edges of society. The yakuza-eiga itself was a genre that developed as a modern take on the chambara so maybe in a few years a group of talented writers, directors, and actors will give birth to a genre that is not only a popular form of entertainment but also addresses contemporary themes and issues just as the yakuza-eiga did during its heyday.

Alfred Hitchcock on Hollywood

"A good film is when the price of the dinner, the theatre admission and the babysitter were worth it."

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"Drama is life with the dull bits cut out."

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"In feature films the director is God; in documentary films God is the director."

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"Television is like the American toaster, you push the button and the same thing pops up everytime."

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"The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder."

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"There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it."

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"Dialogue should simply be a sound among other sounds, just something that comes out of the mouths of people whose eyes tell the story in visual terms."

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"Give them pleasure - the same pleasure they have when they wake up from a nightmare."

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"Film your murders like love scenes, and film your love scenes like murders."

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"I don't understand why we have to experiment with film. I think everything should be done on paper. A musician has to do it, a composer. He puts a lot of dots down and beautiful music comes out. And I think that students should be taught to visualize. That's the one thing missing in all this. The one thing that the student has got to do is to learn that there is a rectangle up there - a white rectangle in a theater - and it has to be filled."

Saboteur (1942)

Before the War on Terrorism had made terrorists a much talked about topic by the media a fear that many Americans and governments from all over the world had was of the saboteur. Unlike terrorists, saboteurs were not primarily out to inflict as many casualties as possible through their actions. Their methods entailed subversion, obstruction, disruption, and if need be destruction. Unlike terrorists who thrive primarily on fear and paranoia the saboteur is the hidden menace. They can set allied governments against each other, wreck havoc on the urban infrastructure, create a general mood of distrust within a population, and they can accomplish all this because a saboteur has the ability to completely assimilate into the enemy camp and become like one of them.

During World War II Alfred Hitchcock was criticized by the British press for staying in America and not taking a more active role in fighting the Nazis. The presses attacks were unwarranted though since Hitchcock was still under contract to David O. Selznick and also his talents were more suited to directing a film crew rather than directing a company of soldiers into battle. By 1942, with the country embroiled in a world war on two fronts, Alfred Hitchcock would release Saboteur. The film would be the first of two that he would make for Universal Studios and also the fourth time that Selznick would loan him out, this time to producers Frank Lloyd and Jack Skirball. The film was a comic reworking of his 1935 British hit The 39 Steps but after more than 60 years since its theatrical release Saboteur has not faired all that well. The film's detractors call attention to the slapdash screenplay, especially the heavy-handed dialogue, and B-list casting as the primary reasons why the film falls just short of being a masterpiece. Closer examination of the picture though reveals that the Master of Suspense may have been trying to stretch his genre muscles with this film.

Saboteur, like its British counterpart The 39 Steps, is structured like a road movie. An aircraft factory worker by the name of Barry Kane, played by Robert Cummings, is on the run after he is framed for sabotage and the subsequent death of his best friend. While on the run he meets an eclectic group of people, some who help him and others that are out to harm him. This eclectic range of characters that he runs into consist of a wisecracking truck driver, a blind hermit living a Thoreau-like existence, a caravan of sideshow performers, and a cabal of fifth column subversives.

Hitchcock and his screenplay collaborators, Joan Harrison, Peter Viertel, and Dorothy Parker, use the film as a platform to discuss the inherent class divisions present in the country. Contrary to how Nazi sympathizers were portrayed in films during that time the film opts not to portray them as tough, scary, or monstrous. In fact the film associates the fascist sympathizer with the effete intellectual. The characters who go out of there way to help Barry are part of the lower rung of the economic ladder and/or have some unique physical characteristic. Be they blind like the hermit, suffering money woes like the truck driver, or born with some sort of medical abnormality like the bearded lady or the conjoined twins in the sideshow act all of these characters in the story lie at the periphery of society. While the fascist sympathizers are rich, educated, and cultured; you would not mistake them as one of the "huddled masses yearning to breath free". In fact these upper class saboteurs would like nothing better but to exterminate those who do not fit their description of a superior individual, something that real-life Nazis were doing in Europe at that time. By making the villains in the film wealthy effete intellectuals Hitchcock attacked the habit that many people from so-called advanced countries had of toting their pedigree, expensive education, and good grooming as signs of their superiority.

A motif that Hitchcock constantly returns to in this film is that of fire and water. The film opens with the fire at the airplane factory, Barry's friend is engulfed in flames after handling a fire extinguisher filled with gasoline, the saboteurs plan to blow up a dam and sabotage a U.S. Navy ship, and the final climactic scene of the film takes place around the torch of the Statue of Liberty. Fire is representative of unchecked aggression and fervor. Making it not such a coincidence that the villains in the film are linked to that element whereas Barry is connected to the element of water since it represents purity and justice. Barry escapes from the cops by jumping into a river, he also escapes imprisonment from a cellar by activating the sprinkler system, and the man that framed Barry for sabotage, Fry, plunges to his death into New York Harbor finally bringing some semblance of justice for all the death and destruction.

One aspect of the film that I wish Hitchcock would have developed further are the elements of screwball comedy in the story. For those unaware screwball comedy is a genre precursor to the modern romantic comedy, but unlike romantic comedies of today the male-female relationship in the screwball genre were more mature. To get around the Production Code writers and directors had to practically invent a new language consisting of verbal and visual cues; so a slightly raised skirt, a glance, or a careful turn of phrase spoke volumes. whereas today the topic of sex is talked about in a more direct manner this directness does not always yield the most honest depictions of contemporary mores and taboos.

In Saboteur the audience's attention is focused on the relationship between Barry Kane and Patricia Martin, played by band singer turned actress Priscilla Lane. They are a typical Hitchcockian couple, Kane is a dark-haired everyman while Patricia Martin is a blonde ice queen who gradually warms up to Kane after realizing his innocence. All throughout the film Kane and Martin fight and bicker like a married couple, each trying to gain control over the other. As in all screwball comedies the topic of gender is always at play. And although Patricia Martin is a pretty model from New York City she is no shrinking violet. After being taken hostage she devises and executes a plan to get the attention of some cab drivers which eventually leads to the cops arresting not only her kidnappers, but practically the entire network of saboteurs. Hitchcock never just casts a pretty face for the female lead in his movies. His female stars were beautiful but they overturned typical gender conventions by facing danger and not only proving that they could handle a crisis but also retain their femininity while doing so, just like all starlets of the screwball genre.

Although Saboteur may never be considered a masterpiece Alfred Hitchcock should be commended for his attempt to blend genres together. He may not be all that successful, but the final result is a wonderful document of an era when political fervor blinded so many individuals of their ability to think for themselves.

Foreign Correspondent (1940)

  During times of great turmoil and strife those in power look to artists to rally the people to action. In 1940 the conflict in Europe was boiling over into a full-blown world war while in America Alfred Hitchcock's Hollywood career was limping along. After signing a seven-year contract with David O. Selznick in 1939 what Hitchcock initially believed to be his ticket to bigger budgets and better resources became a cage. When he worked in England he had enough cache to make the pictures he wanted the way he wanted to make them, but in Hollywood it was the producer who was king. Selznick thought of Hitchcock as an artisan, a very skilled artisan but an artisan none the less. Hitchcock's first American picture, Rebecca, earned several Oscar nominations and even won for Best Picture but it was telling that the statuette was awarded to Selznick and not Hitchcock. The method in which Hitchcock made his films was antithetical to Selznick's process. For Selznick the proper way to make a movie was that you shoot as much camera coverage as possible; so a director would shoot so many long shots, medium shots, and close-ups after which an editor would cull from all the material several possible versions of the film, leaving final cut approval to the producer. Hitchcock looked at this process as wasteful. He believed in visualizing a film onto paper first and then shooting, as a result during pre-production Hitchcock would storyboard as much of the film as possible. His exacting method would make it impossible for anyone who dared to interfere with his work by making sure that there was only one logical way to edit the shots together. After Rebecca though both men would take a break from each other when Selznick loaned out the director to Walter Wanger. It would not be the last time that Selznick would loan Hitchcock out to a different studio and each time he did Hitchcock was able to not only flex his artistic muscles but also prove to the naysayers that he was the Master of Suspense.

  In 1935 Walter Wanger purchased the rights to Vincent Sheean's Personal History for $10,000 and after five years and 16 writers he got nowhere in adapting the book for the screen. It was only after Wanger finally dropped the idea for a faithful adaptation of the book did the project pick up any speed. Wanger kept the idea of a movie about a foreign correspondent, but because the conflicts brewing in Europe were a sensitive issue for many he decided to make the film a Hollywood style thriller to make the subject matter more palatable to audiences. Hiring Hitchcock to direct was a no-brainer since in England the director had made several Joseph Conrad inspired espionage thrillers like his 1936 film Sabotage and the classic "wrong man" thriller The 39 Steps. After being signed on to direct, Hitchcock called upon Charles Bennett and Joan Harrison, both frequent collaborators of his, to come up with a workable script and working together they helped to create one of Hithcock's most underrated masterpieces.

  The screenplay that Hitchcock and his collaborators came up with was a story about an American reporter who ends up uncovering a conspiracy that would ultimately lead to a continent-wide war. The genius of the story is that like in all top notch Hitchcock films the Master of Suspense balances the tense action set pieces with genuinely funny moments. It's a testament to Hitchcock's confidence in blending suspense and comedy by the sheer fact that he not only cast Robert Benchley in a small part in the film, but he also allowed the humorist to ad-lib his lines. And even though the threat of a world war hangs heavy in every single frame of the film Hitchcock is not afraid to lighten the mood with scenes that could have come straight out of a romantic comedy. To get the audience to invest in the story Hitchcock and his writers inject the film with a romantic subplot; a story device seen in previous Hitchcock classics like The 39 Steps, The Lady Vanishes, and his most stylish thriller, North by Northwest, a film which is heavily indebted to Foreign Correspondent.

  A possible reason as to why the film has been ignored by the average film fan maybe because the cast is made up of relative unknowns. Yet unknowns or not Hitchcock was right on the money when it came to casting decisions. Joel McCrea is spot-on as the self-confident reporter Johnny Jones. He is no poor man's Cary Grant. McCrea has a difficult job in playing a man conflicted between his duty to report about the impending conflict in Europe and stop those who would fan the flames of war , and his love for a woman whose father is the main instigator in the impending war. McCrea bridges the divide between his duty and his personal emotions by playing Johnny Jones as a man who could care less about the bigger picture. He is not apathetic to the European situation, but rather as his editor says "What Europe needs is a fresh unused mind." Jones is a man who has no interest in politics. He makes decisions and acts on information based on things he can see and can verify as the truth. It is a telling detail that before Jones is hired to be a foreign correspondent he was a crime reporter who was remanded to his desk after punching out a police officer while running after some crooks. This single fact about Johnny Jones presented to us at the start of the film explains the man entirely; he will not let injustice go even if he must make enemies with those who are charged with the responsibility of keeping the peace.

  The man that Johnny must go against in the film is Stephen Fisher, played wonderfully by Herbert Marshall. He is suave, sophisticated, loves his daughter, and is the head of the Universal Peace Party. It has become old hat to call Hitchcock a great director, but he was a genius for realizing the potential of making the villain a sympathetic three-dimensional character. By making Fisher a man and not a monster the characters in the movie and the audience watching the film have a more complicated relationship with the antagonist, and when Fisher ultimately sacrifices his life we feel just as much pain as if one of our own friends had perished.

  The things that Hitchcock accomplished with this film could not have been realized without the help of so many people behind the camera. Two important names that should be mentioned are the set designer, William Cameron Menzies, and the score composer, Alfred Newman. William Cameron Menzies had a career as an art director that could be traced back to the inception of Hollywood as the nation's film capitol. He worked on several silent pictures and when directors began shooting with color film stock he found new ways to use the color palette to establish a mood or accentuate the inherent drama present in the story. Some standout examples of his work in Foreign Correspondent can be seen in the three most famous set pieces in the picture. The first being the assassination of the Van Meer look-alike. As the story goes Hitchcock and his crew of technicians had to switch back and forth between the smoke machine and the rain machine to get just the right look, and it pays off. Looking back the scene plays almost like a funeral with all the rain, black umbrellas, and even the building where the Peace Party is holding their conference has the look of an ancient temple. And as the Van Meer look-alike walks up the long flight of stairs, stairs seem to always allude to death in Hitchcock's pictures be it in Vertigo, Psycho, or The Birds, an assassin meets the look-alike with a gun and kills him. A chase soon ensues which brings the story to the next set piece in the film, the so-called Windmill scene. The interior set where Johnny Jones discovers the real Van Meer is clearly influenced by James Whale's Frankenstein pictures and it is a credit to his skill as a set designer that Menzies can create a feeling of dread and claustrophobia with a few windmill cogs and a dilapidated staircase. The final great set piece in the picture is the plane crash. The spectacular effect was created by rear projecting onto a rice paper screen some footage that a stunt plane had shot while doing some maneuvers which involved diving towards the ocean and pulling back up before they hit the water. With the footage projected on the rice paper which stood in front of a cockpit set, when the time came for the plane to hit the water a dunk tank behind the rice paper would release a torrent of water and rip through the rice paper and flood the cockpit.

  The score composer, Alfred Newman, had an equally important role in making Foreign Correspondent a classic Hitchcock picture. Newman opens the picture with a jaunty and very romantic tune, which will ultimately become the picture's musical theme. And this opening tune prepares the audience not for a tense thriller but a light-hearted comedy or to be more accurate an adventure tale. In film after film by utilizing the contrast of opposites to his advantage Hitchcock has been able to hold the audience's attention. The jaunty musical theme of the picture contrasts with the seriousness of the situation we are observing on the screen. Newman's score lulls the audience into forming the expectation that they can relax and enjoy some light fare, but as the film moves along they become caught up in the story and the score retreats towards the background and is only used to punctuate the action on the screen. The musical score is never used to tell the audience what to feel but rather enhance the drama already present in a scene. Newman's score offers a balance between the light comedy and heavy drama of the story, and allows audiences some breathing space between the suspenseful moments.

  Whenever people speak about Foreign Correspondent they inevitably make mention of the film as a propaganda piece. Many look at this fact as a demerit against the picture, but many films even today are laced with an agenda and most aren't as entertaining as Foreign Correspondent is. And maybe this is where the animosity lies. Hitchcock the entertainer tackling a serious social and political issue must have irked many. To have an entertainer be able to rally an entire audience with one movie while all their speeches and campaigning could only accomplish moderate excitement must have made many politicians jealous. The highest compliment Hitchcock might have gotten for this picture came from Paul Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda for Nazi Germany, when he remarked that the film was "a first-class production which no doubt will make a certain impression upon the broad masses of the people in enemy countries." Goebbels and Hitchcock, two very different men, but both knew that a single frame of film could excite people much more than lectures or speeches could ever hope to do. Film has the possibility to make ideas tangible, to create and recreate reality, and because of this vulnerability to the spell of cinema their have been a countless number of people who have been so moved by a film that they have taken action against injustice. This power of the motion picture to take political ideas and mask them as filmic ideals has often been abused, but as we evolve as a society so will the motion picture and maybe someday we can start to live up to the ideals that a good movie can perpetuate.