Editing Foreign Correspondent (film) (section)

==Plot==
[[File:Foreign Correspondent (1940) - Trailer.webm|thumb|right|upright=1.2|thumbtime=2:18|[[:C:File:Foreign Correspondent (1940) - Trailer.webm|Trailer]] for ''Foreign Correspondent'']]

In mid-August 1939, just before the outbreak of World War{{nbsp}}II, the editor of the ''New York Morning Globe'', Mr. Powers ([[Harry Davenport (actor)|Harry Davenport]]), sends crime reporter John Jones, using the [[pen name]] "Huntley Haverstock" ([[Joel McCrea]]), to Europe to report on conditions there. [[File:Foreign Correspondent trailer 16 McCrea crop.jpg|thumb|left|250px|[[Joel McCrea]] as "John Jones", foreign correspondent]] Jones's first assignment is to interview a Dutch diplomat named Van Meer ([[Albert Bassermann]]), at a luncheon.

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.

The newspaper editor, Powers, sends Jones on to Amsterdam to cover Van Meer's next appearance, at a conference of the Universal Peace Party. When Jones stops to greet Van Meer outside the conference hall, Van Meer seems to be in some kind of hypnotic state and does not recognize him. Suddenly, an eager photographer moves to take a photo of the Dutch diplomat – actually concealing a gun near the camera. He assassinates Van Meer. Jones runs after the shooter and ends up encountering Carol and a reporter friend of hers, Scott ffolliott ([[George Sanders]]). They give chase in his car. Outside the city, they seem to lose sight of the car they have been following, but Jones suspects that the assassin is hiding in a windmill.

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.

[[File:Foreign Correspondent trailer 12 Sanders crop.jpg|thumb|250px|[[George Sanders]] as "ffolliott"]]
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 Jones by getting him out of London. When she overhears Jones 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]]<ref>{{Cite web |date=2022-09-03 |title=Foreign Correspondent (1940) – Deep Focus Review – Movie Reviews, Essays, and Analysis |url=https://www.deepfocusreview.com/definitives/foreign-correspondent/ |access-date=2024-05-01 |website=Deep Focus Review |language=en-US}}</ref>). 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.