My Year With Hitchcock: June

This year (2026), from January until December, I'll be watching every Alfred Hitchcock film I can find. This is similar to the viewing projects I did for Woody Allen in 2016 and Disney Animation in 2022. I'll be watching a different movie each week, in chronological order and reviewing them as I go. The rule for the reviews is that I cannot reference any movie I have not yet watched. They don't exist yet. Each film is reviewed as if it were brand new (sort of). The only difference this time is that I have to watch two movies a week in January and February, since there are more than 52 movies to watch (plus TV stuff later on). Reviews will also be posted on my Letterbox'd page. 

WEEK 23

Foreign Correspondent (1940) - 121 min.

Watched on 6/7/26

Availability: HBO Max

“Foreign Correspondent” is Hitchcock’s second film made with an American studio, but once again, as with “Rebecca” right before it, it feels very English, perhaps more so this time around since it starts out in New York, only to have the bulk of the story take place overseas in Europe. Hitchcock’s films during the 30s hinted at the war that was brewing at the time, but never directly referenced it. “Foreign Correspondent” was made in the early forties at a time when Hollywood could no longer shy away from the subject. 

Still, Hitchcock manages to throw together a fun yarn about a correspondent for a New York newspaper who is sent to Holland to get more information on a treaty that has some secret items in it. Joel McCrea plays our hero, who has to change his name from John Jones to Huntley Haverstock. Naturally, he gets tangled up with a politician’s daughter (Laraine Gray) and stumbles onto a story bigger than he ever imagined involving an assassination, a kidnapping and lots of windmills (oh, does Hitch love his gorgeously shot windmills in this film). 

Hitchcock is back in thriller mode after delving into a period piece drama (“Jamaica Inn”) and gothic horror-mystery (“Rebecca”), but “Foreign Correspondent” has a slightly different feel to it when you know it was made during the war and not in the years leading up to it. The film is bookended with direct messages to the audience, first as a dedication to all foreign correspondents who risked their necks in Europe to provide key information to allies, then at the end with our hero throwing the script away and speaking directly into a radio microphone during a broadcast and urging Americans to do their part and for Londoners to join the fight and to keep a look out, all before the film fades out to a rousing rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner(!). 

Again, he’s working with a big Hollywood budget this time and appears to be enjoying the perks that come with that particularly in the last act when Hitch gets to use water tanks and giant waves to fuel the action in one of his most lavish spectacles yet at this point. It almost seems like he wanted to match David O. Selznick’s penchant for grand set pieces, a la the burning of Atlanta in “Gone With The Wind,” but with water. Even Gray’s entrance of the film, in which she is seen talking about the futilities of war with only men surrounding her, is reminiscent of Vivian Leigh’s first moments as Scarlett O’Hara. 

One wishes there were a more memorable lead at the center of it all than Joel McCrea. A more believable love story would’ve been nice, too, but “Foreign Correspondent” has enough truly memorable moments to make it a fun excursion. I’m sure it landed differently back in the day and it’s good to see Hitchcock not insulating himself into his movie world and actually directly acknowledging the world around him, even if his version of that world is full of fantasy and improbability. Hitchcock proves himself to be an artist first, a showman a close second, then maybe further down the list might be political commentator.

WEEK 24

Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941) - 95 min.

Watched on 6/17/2026 

Availability: Warner Archive blu-ray

Watching “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” on its own–separate from a year-long Hitchcock viewing project–it’s easier to just take it in as a screwball comedy of its era, with the odd little bit of trivia that it’s directed by Alfred Hitchcock. It doesn’t distinguish itself from the genre by any stretch, but it also doesn’t have to. The leads are charming, the story is absurd and the comedy almost always lands. If that’s all you need, then what’s not to like?

Watching it as part of a year-long Hitchcock viewing project, it plays much differently. We watch hoping we’ll find the Alfred Hitchcock we know and love somewhere within the framework. Where is the masterful visual storytelling? The crazy set pieces? The dark humor? The careful attention to detail with the cinematography? Everything is so straightforward and matter-of-fact. After his first two American-made films “Rebecca” and “Foreign Correspondent,” which still felt decidedly British, here is Hitchcock’s most American film yet, a goofy comedy that doesn’t aspire to be anything but.

Project or no project, no matter what the contest, the film remains a delight. Carole Lombard is the true star here as one half of a married couple who, through some obscure loophole, find out they actually are not legally married. Robert Montgomery plays the husband, who earlier confesses, innocently enough, that if he were to do it all over again, he would not have married her, naively thinking this answer to a hypothetical question has no bearing on their marriage. Obviously, it does and he sees this situation as an opportunity to actually not marry her after all. In true screwball fashion, they each try to start a life away from each other, only to remain stuck in each other’s orbit.

The film would not work if we didn’t believe them as a married couple to begin with. The script wisely finds them in their third year, still more or less in love, but the chemistry has clearly changed since those early days. Montgomery is the perfect fool, flippantly turning their marriage on its ear, then quickly realizing his error. Lombard is the stronger force, making him pay for his mistake at every turn. The friction is fun to watch, especially in the third act as the stakes for both of them get higher.

I think I like this one more than most, if only because I’m a sucker for this genre in this time period. It’s hard to compare it to other Hitchcock movies, of course, but so what? He made a good version of a different kind of movie that he will never make again. Every great director needs one oddball on their resume. I like that this is his oddball, and at such a pivotal time in his career when he could have played it safe and opted for another spy thriller.

WEEK 25

Suspicion (1941) - 99 min.

Watched on 6/22/2026

Availability: Warner Archive blu-ray

I wish the studio heads had let Hitchcock have his way with the title of this film. “Suspicion” tells us too much about what to expect and how to watch the film (Hitchcock wanted to call the film “Johnny” after Cary Grant’s character so it would seem more like a character study than a thriller). The first half of this film dovetails nicely with his last film, the entirely comedic “Mr. and Mrs. Smith.” Giving this film a more innocuous title would’ve been a great practical joke on the audience expecting another light comedy, only to have the tables turn on them. 

It seems like that’s what it wants to be, up to a point, of course, when we start to look for reasons to be suspicious of Johnny. He’s clearly running some sort of con on his new bride, Lina, played by Joan Fontaine, who again plays a newlywed with a husband she cannot bring herself to fully trust. Helping her through this trying time is Johnny’s friend, Beaky (Nigel Bruce), who charmingly brushes off Johnny’s quirks and erratic behavior so as to put Lina at ease, but is he in on a scheme as well? 

Bruce’s performance keeps everything light and airy, as the suspicions mount and Lina becomes more fearful. He’s a welcome presence every time he’s on screen, as is Fontaine, but we’ve seen this side of her before. Grant is pulling something off, though, that’s tricky for him, but he does it with ease. His persona is at odds with every stupid thing Johnny does, yet we completely buy it. Grant plays him with an eternal optimism that everything he’s doing will work out somehow in the end, yet we keep watching for the darker tendencies to come out. 

I admit, I didn’t think much of this film by its conclusion until I watched the doc on the blu-ray and some commented that the film works just as a showcase for Grant to try something new, to throw the audience off a bit from their expectations of what they typically get from him. The more I think about it that way, and as a character study that Hitchcock wanted in the first place, the more I like it. I still think the ending is a bit soft and doesn’t quite work, but knowing the ending now, I bet Grant’s performance is even more fun to watch a second time.

So, maybe the practical joke is on me anyway. Not just with the ending, but in the way that ending informs Grant’s performance all the way through. Hitchcock sets up the joke with his compelling shots involving darkness and shadows when we sense danger is near (not to mention an exquisitely lit, foreboding glass of milk), but it’s all part of a ruse to keep us on our toes and our eyes on the three leads.

WEEK 26

Saboteur (1942) - 110 min.

Watched on 6/28/2026

Availability: Universal blu-ray set

After a double-header of marriage-based comedy and suspense films, Hitchcock returns to the genre he knows all too well: the wrongfully-accused-fugitive-on-the-run adventure film. This is basically a retread of “The 39 Steps” (featuring familiar elements of “The Man Who Knew Too Much,” “Sabotage,” and “Secret Agent”), but for an American studio and with an American audience in mind who were are going through the throws of WWII. 

This one has a patriotic slant that harkens back to “Foreign Correspondent.” One character takes the position that an American saboteur is worse than a cold-blooded murderer of one person. Another character rightly espouses that “the most American thing is to presume innocence until proven guilty” and not to turn anyone over to the authorities without knowledge of such guilt, or to name names. There’s even a dwarf character on (what else?) train with circus people, who has a little mustache and doesn’t want to vote on whether or not to turn in our wrongfully-accused hero. He insists they just turn him in without just cause. He’s instantly labeled a fascist. 

Hitchcock was trying to Americanize his work more and more during this period, and the results are mixed. On the one hand, the films fall in line with a lot of mainstream American films during this period that also directly referenced the war. That went with the territory. The politics here aren’t muddled or anything, but unlike “Foreign Correspondent,” the film itself is just a little too formulaic to make its messages more urgent. True, American audiences might not have remembered “The 39 Steps” from nearly eight years ago to notice that Hitchcock was phoning this one in, but it’s definitely apparent now when studying his work more closely and with more clarity.

“Saboteur” certainly has great moments and is made to be just as much fun as “The 39 Steps” (and the other films already mentioned), but it’s getting harder and harder to write about this sub-genre of his work after seeing at least four or five variations on it in such close proximity. The wrong man (Robert Cummings) and his romantic-to-be tag-along (Priscilla Lane) are fine. The pacing is good. The sequence atop the Statue of Liberty is impressive. Otto Kruger, as the chief villain, is one of the best villains in any Hitchcock film, suave and cunning, without being too villainy. 

There’s good stuff in “Saboteur,” but it’s even better if you don’t know everything that came before it (which is how I first saw it a few years ago). Even as an Americanized version of a better film, it received a lukewarm response when it came out. Perhaps it was time to put the formula to bed.