Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent versus Sheean's Personal History

I've previously blogged about various books and short stories that inspired the films of my favourite director, Alfred Hitchcock. As I continue to occasionally indulge in the few remaining works, I recently read Personal History (1935) by Vincent Sheean. It's the work that inspired Hitchcock's 1940 film Foreign Correspondent.

You remember Foreign Correspondent, surely? Among we Hitchcock fans it does appear to be undervalued. Books about Hitchcock films tend to bring up the memorable scene where an assassin with a camera shoots his target. Some might bring up the film's impressive plane crash effect at the climax, others mention the windmill hideout or Edmund Gwenn's brief appearance as an assassin; that's about it. Another undervalued film, Saboteur (1942) is guaranteed a favourable write-up based solely on the Statue of Liberty sequence; Foreign Correspondent simply lacks anything that striking. But heck, no one hates the movie (whereas you can find plenty of Hitchcock books whose authors dislike Number Seventeen, Jamaica Inn, Under Capricorn, Torn Curtain and Topaz).

But what of the source material? Personal History is... virtually unrelated. Vincent Sheean was indeed a journalist and foreign correspondent. He was in Europe and encountered a spy once. That's... it. It appears that when he sold his book to Hollywood they weren't really interested in maintaining fidelity to the work. It feels like the only reason Foreign Correspondent was released as an "adaptation" is so the studio could feel like their investment in the book rights had paid out.

It's kind of a shame; the full text of Personal History would never have made a good film - it's Sheean's life story, covering his university days, his time hanging around Europe, traveling through the Rif of Morocco, falling (literally) head-over-heels in love with communism in China and witnessing the brutality of Palestine. It's too much for one book and he doesn't shape events, merely observe them.

Still, there are at least two aspects of the book which would have been interesting in a motion picture adaptation. While in Spain, Sheean learns he's being shadowed by a government-appointed spy. To his amazement, the spy is very casual about his occupation and happy to talk about his work with Sheean. The punch-clock approach the spy has to his work is very amusing and would have suited the type of comic relief Hitchcock liked. The other great aspect is the time Sheean spent in the Rif. It's full of danger and dilemma, especially when Sheean has to go undercover.

Personal History probably isn't for every Hitchcock fan - it's a non-fiction biography with almost nothing to with the film. As well, Sheean was a man of his time - he wrote very passionately about communism (largely because he was in love with a communist woman, though he repeatedly protested he was actually very objective) yet he held very Victorian-like ideals about proper behaviour. It won't be to everyone's tastes. But to his credit, he wrote very openly about the subjects he grappled with.