"Actor: Frances Carson"

• Foreign Correspondent | DVD | (21/04/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The first of Alfred Hitchcock's World War II features, Foreign Correspondent was completed in 1940, as the European war was only beginning to erupt across national borders. Its titular hero, Johnny Jones (Joel McCrea), is an American crime reporter dispatched by his New York publisher to put a fresh spin on the drowsy dispatches emanating from overseas, his nose for a good story (and, of course, some fortuitous timing) promptly leading him to the "crime" of fascism and Nazi Germany's designs on European conquest. In attempting to learn more about a seemingly noble peace effort, Jones (who's been saddled with the dubious nom de plume Hadley Haverstock) walks into the middle of an assassination, uncovers a spy ring, and, not entirely coincidentally, falls in love--a pattern familiar to admirers of Hitchcock's espionage thrillers, of which this is a thoroughly entertaining example. McCrea's hardy Yankee charms are neatly contrasted with the droll English charm of colleague George Sanders; Herbert Marshall provides a plummy variation on the requisite, ambiguous "good-or-is-he-really-bad" guy; Laraine Day affords a lovely heroine; and Robert Benchley (who contributed to the script) pops up, albeit too briefly, for comic relief. As good as the cast is, however, it's Hitchcock's staging of key action sequences that makes Foreign Correspondent a textbook example of the director's visual energy: an assassin's escape through a rain-soaked crowd is registered by rippling umbrellas, a nest of spies is detected by the improbable direction of a windmill's spinning sails and Jones's nocturnal flight across a pitched city rooftop produces its own contextual comment when broken neon tubes convert the Hotel Europe into "Hot Europe". --Sam Sutherland

• Saboteur | DVD | (17/10/2005) from £8.99   |  Saving you £1.00 (11.12%)   |  RRP £9.99

  This Hitchcock thriller is mainly famous for its climax, which finds the villain (Norman Lloyd) hanging by his sleeve from the torch on the Statue of Liberty as the seam begins to unravel. Otherwise, it's not one of the director's great pictures, though it's still worth a look. Set during the initial stages of World War II, the story concerns a ring of Nazi fifth columnists who plot to weaken American military defences by blowing up a munitions factory, a dam and a battleship. In an early example of Hitchcock's celebrated "wrong man" theme, the hero Barry Kane (Robert Cummings) gets falsely accused of sabotage and becomes a fugitive, hunted from coast to coast. Eventually, he hooks up with the heroine Pat Martin (Priscilla Lane), a super-patriot who takes some convincing of his innocence and plans to turn him in--until the inevitable chemical reaction occurs. It's a highly episodic tale that may put you in mind of Hitchcock's previous The 39 Steps (1935) and his later North by Northwest (1959).The miscellaneous incidents (a shoot-out at a cinema, a bizarre encounter with the freaks in a circus troupe) are often exciting in themselves. The trouble is they just sort of lie there like so-many scattered marbles, never building into a coherent and satisfying whole. The bland dialogue supplied by novice screenwriter Peter Viertel doesn't help matters much. Neither does the casting of the two stars, square, wholesome types, entirely lacking in the perversity and eccentricity one associates with the Hitchcock universe. (It's tedious to hear Lane endlessly mouthing off about the American way, while Cummings must be counted one of the dullest leading men in Hollywood history.) Still, this half-hearted effort by the pot-bellied master of suspense would probably make the reputation of a dozen lesser directors. --Peter Matthews