Alfred Hitchcock Ben Hecht consulted Robert Millikan of the California Institute of Technology about the development of a uranium bomb. Selznick complained that the notion was "science fiction", only to be confronted by the news of the detonation of two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in August 1945. Hitchcock formed an independent production company, Transatlantic Pictures, with his friend Sidney Bernstein. He made two films with Transatlantic, one of which was his first colour film. With "Rope" (1948), Hitchcock experimented with marshalling suspense in a confined environment, as he had done earlier with "Lifeboat" (1944). The film appears to
Alfred Hitchcock was nominated for Best Director, his first of five such nominations. Hitchcock's second American film was the thriller "Foreign Correspondent" (1940), set in Europe, based on Vincent Sheean's book "Personal History" (1935) and produced by Walter Wanger. It was nominated for Best Picture that year. Hitchcock felt uneasy living and working in Hollywood while his country was at war; his concern resulted in a film that overtly supported the British war effort. Filmed in the first year of World War II, it was inspired by the rapidly changing events in Europe, as covered by an American newspaper reporter played by