New on Disc: 'Foreign Correspondent' and more …

3 Mar, 2014 By: Mike Clark

Foreign Correspondent

Criterion, Thriller, $39.95 Blu-ray/DVD combo, NR.
Stars Joel McCrea, Laraine Day, Herbert Marshall, Albert Basserman.
1940. Joel McCrea plays an ordinary guy typical of Alfred Hitchcock films getting tossed and turned by unexpected intrigue and a polished smoothie (Herbert Marshall) who’s perpetrating it. Plus, the film has a pre-WWII call-to-arms speech that’s a lot less subtle than the rest. Foreign Correspondent was among the classier American features to get an early TV release, but was frequently exhibited via worn prints. Criterion has given the movie a new 2K restoration, and it looks better than I’ve ever seen it.
Extras: One of the typically bountiful Criterion extras is an interview with writer and film historian Mark Harris about the ways in which Hollywood contributed to the wartime propaganda effort. The other main extra is a new piece on the film’s special effects. There’s also a written essay by film scholar James Naremore, a 1942 Life war-related photo essay by Hitchcock, a 1946 radio adaptation of this yarn with Joseph Cotten, and Hitchcock’s 1972 appearance on “The Dick Cavett Show.”
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Glickman

Available via Warner Archive
HBO, Documentary, $17.95 DVD, NR.
2013. This HBO documentary is a two-pronged affair that deals first with Marty Glickman’s own success as an athlete — he was a brilliant runner who got shafted out of appearing in the Hitler-hosted 1936 Olympics in Berlin — with the Olympics experience as a climactic bitter pill, and then as the storied announcer (he coined the term “swish”) for the New York Knicks, New York Giants and New York Jets. Several household names appear in interviews to praise him.
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New on Disc: 'Foreign Correspondent' and more …

Foreign Correspondent

Glickman

About the Author: Mike Clark