production still
Foreign Correspondent is a film that likes to travel, following its protagonist from New York to London, to Amsterdam and back, then crossing the Atlantic, first by plane then by ship. It also enjoys names that are topographically significant or that by their fame carry with them strong topographical associations: the New York Globe, New Scotland Yard, the Carlton, the Savoy, 'Librairie française', Hotel Europe... Every place is signposted, and by displaying place names associated with the outbreak and development of the war, it binds together topography and chronology:
Very little of this work, however, is done by maps, of which there are five in the film.
The credits of Foreign Correspondent roll over a stylised, architectural globe that revolves four times, varying the backdrop to the pages of names. The name of the director is positioned over the United States. Since this is Hitchcock's first cinematic contribution to the war effort of the country he has left behind, the strong association of his name and his adopted home might seem tactless - a post to come on this site will look more closely at Hitchcock's relation to England in this film.
After the credits the camera pulls away to reveal that the globe is not an extradiegetic, prefatory emblem but an integral part of the mise-en-scène, placed atop a high New York building into which we will pass, via a window, to discover the beginnings of the story.
The credits of Foreign Correspondent roll over a stylised, architectural globe that revolves four times, varying the backdrop to the pages of names. The name of the director is positioned over the United States. Since this is Hitchcock's first cinematic contribution to the war effort of the country he has left behind, the strong association of his name and his adopted home might seem tactless - a post to come on this site will look more closely at Hitchcock's relation to England in this film.
After the credits the camera pulls away to reveal that the globe is not an extradiegetic, prefatory emblem but an integral part of the mise-en-scène, placed atop a high New York building into which we will pass, via a window, to discover the beginnings of the story.
The film's other four maps are less artificially integrated into the space of the story. Three appear as establishing décor of the New York Globe's London office. One of these is only briefly glimpsed in the outer office, and seems to be a world map (though we only see the Asian part):
The map of Europe in the office is at first sight even harder to make out, but the focus slowly changes to render it legible. The clearest thing on this map is its label, which functions emblematically, like the 'Hotel Europe' sign:
The first places we see on this map - the countries around the Mediterranean - are not connected to the story of the film, but there is a moment in the sequence where a different framing shows the upper part of the map, with England, Holland and the countries invaded by Germany; this more precisely connects the map in the film to the map of the film. It is a brief congruence, as Robert Benchley ('Stebbins') immediately stands up to hide again that part of the map, as he puts on his jacket:
By contrast, across the room is a map which, though clear in its outlines and bearing a partially legible label ('Graphic Summary ****** Activity'), is impossible to identify (for me at least - any suggestions as to what kind of map this is, and as to the place mapped, would be most welcome). It doesn't seem to carry into the film any meaning other than the (ironic) suggestion that the work done by Stebbins in this office requires a degree of topographical exactitude:
The last map in the film is aboard ship, and functions again as establishing décor: it shows the sea between Wales and Ireland. In this sequence we are given a precise location ('300 miles off the coast of England, latitude 45'), but that cannot be somewhere in the Irish Sea. The sea on the map serves, more loosely, to contrast topographic and cinematic modes of representation - to the advantage of the latter, of course.
A more developed reading of the places in Foreign Correspondent will appear on this site soon. Hopefully by then I shall have learnt more about the mysterious 'Graphic Summary' map.