When he's called into the boss's office, McCrea expects to be fired for the fight, but instead learns he's been promoted to foreign correspondent. He's assigned to cover Steven Fisher and The Universal Peace Party and their upcoming affair for Dutch diplomat Van Meer.
On his way there, McCrea manages to cop a ride with Van Meer in his taxi, but the diplomat shuts up when he learns McCrea is a reporter. Once there, McCrea manages to insult Fisher's daughter, but in classic romantic comedy fashion, falls in love with her even though she hates him.
However, McCrea's suspicions are aroused when Fisher announces that Van Meer can't come to the event, but will be at a conference in Amsterdam. Obviously, McCrea knows that Van Meer did go this event. Another famous Hitchcockian disappearance.
This sets up one of Hitchcock's dazzling sequences. He pans the camera along the Amsterdam street in front of the conference, where countless people are standing under umbrellas in the rain, waiting for the dignitaries to leave.
One of them is an assassin who shots Van Meer while pretending to take his picture, then disappears into the crowd, aided by the many umbrellas in the crowd.
However, McCrea manages to commandeer a car with Fisher's daughter and another foreign correspondent, the incredibly urbane George Sanders, fresh from playing The Saint.
They follow the assassin until the trail ends in a field of windmills. It's McCrea who figures the car must have gone into the nearest windmill. He sneaks inside and sees that the real Van Meer is being held there. It was a lookalike who was killed, to increase political tensions in Europe while the real Van Meer is being tortured to learn the secret clause in a treaty (the same "McGuffin" Hitchcock used not long before in The Lady Vanishes).
The images of McCrea creeping around inside the windmill are dusty and cramped, yet convey a profound gothic feel, as though McCrea were exploring the dark interior of the world instead of a simple windmill.
However, the bad guys manage to escape with Van Meer. Back in his hotel room, McCrea has to escape two assassins disguised as policemen, and goes into Fisher's daughter's room. They manage to escape, and on a boat back to England, decide to get married.
In Fisher's house, McCrea spots one of the kidnappers and informs Fisher, who ignores this. Instead, he arranges for McCrea to have a bodyguard. The bodyguard cajols him into going up the Westminster Cathedral tower.
In another great Hitchcockian twist, he misleads us by showing the bodyguard rushing to push McCrea off the tower, the cuts to people on the street witnessing a body falling. But McCrea stepped aside just in time, and it was the bodyguard/assassin.
McCrea know realizes Fisher is one of the enemies. He and the other correspondent devise a plan - which seems silly but does involve manipulating Fisher's daughter) to get him to confess. It fails, but they find Van Meer and get him to the hospital.
England and France declare war on Germany.
They all ride a Boeing Clipper plane back to America. Fisher confesses to his daughter that he is a spy, but she still blames McCrea for using her to get his story. Then they're shot down by a German destroyer which mistakes them for a bomber.
They all manage to find sanctuary on the wind of the aircraft, but it obviously won't hold all of them. Fisher proves that he does have some decency, if only out of his love for his daughter, by slipping off the wing so the others will more likely survive.
The sequence where they're all riding in the airplane and then shot down is immensely exciting and well done. It was designed by William Cameron Menzies, who also designed a number of science fiction movies such as Things to Come.
At the end, McCrea broadcasts from London during a bombing raid and urges Americans to keep the lights on because the rest of the world is going dark.
Actually, that scene was still fiction when it was written and produced, but became real shortly before the film was released.
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