Notable cast/crew: Paul Newman as Professor Michael Armstrong. Julie Andrews as Sarah Sherman. Lila Kedrova as Countess Kuchinska. Wolfgang Kieling as Hermann Gromek. Ludwig Donath as Professor Gustav Lindt. Costume Design by Edith Head.
Running time: 128 minutesDirector: Alfred Hitchcock
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| The Big 50 |
Armstrong isn't really defecting. He's seeking out Lindt because he thinks Lindt has cracked the solution that eluded him. Once he has that, Armstrong is going to escape back to the West. He ducks his East German handler, Gromek, and meets up with his contacts who are arranging his escape, but he's tracked down by Gromek at a farmhouse where his contacts live. After Gromek threatens to report them, Armstrong and the woman kill him. The cab driver who drove Armstrong to the farm recognizes Gromek in the news when he is reported as missing and alerts the authorities.
The security service doesn't want Armstrong talking to Lindt while there is suspicion of what Armstrong was doing, but Lindt is due to leave for Leningrad at any moment and needs to know what Armstrong was able to do in his testing in America. Armstrong tricks Lindt into revealing his discovery, but the police are closing in. They have found Gromek's body. After securing the formula, Armstrong begins his flight to the West with Sherman.
After an elaborate escape involving decoy buses, post office rendezvouses, and stowing away on a ship in a ballet company's equipment, they are able to make it to Sweden.
MacGuffin: Professor Lindt's secret formula
Hitchcock cameo: Sitting in the hotel lobby with a small child
Hitchcock themes:
- Blondes
Verdict: Torn Curtain marked a break with Hitchcock's old movie-making team due to retirement, death, and disagreements. The last four films of his career suffered for it as the quality is not there that had marked the run of films he'd made from the early 50s to the early 60s. It was Hitchcock's 50th film. It is a decent enough story, but there are some glaring plot problems. The film was also poorly cast. Most of the problems are rooted in the studio forcing Hitchcock to use their choices. Hitchcock wasn't satisfied with the script (a problem that would also plague his next movie, Topaz), and the studio forced him to use Julie Andrews and Paul Newman because they wanted bankable stars. The script couldn't be reworked partly because Andrews had a narrow window to film this as she was a hot commodity having just come off of Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music. She's miscast, and although Newman does a decent job, they have no chemistry together. It was reportedly one of Hitchcock's most unhappy directing jobs due to the studio interference and disagreement with Newman over how certain scenes should work. Hitchcock was so unhappy with this film that he decided to not to make a trailer with his appearance in it.
The idea behind Torn Curtain came from the defection of British diplomats Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean to Russia in 1951. Hitchcock was particularly intrigued about Maclean’s life in the Soviet Union and about Melinda Marling, Maclean’s wife, who followed her husband a year later with the couple’s three children.
Bernard Herrmann wrote the original score, but Universal Pictures executives convinced Hitchcock that it needed to be more upbeat. Hitchcock and Herrmann had a major disagreement, the score was dropped, and they never worked together again. The resultant score is too lighthearted for what is a rather serious film and is at times jarring in the context of what is occurring on-screen. It's hard to believe Herrmann wouldn't have provided a better, and more appropriate, score.
In the shot in which Alfred Hitchcock's cameo occurs, the music briefly changes to "Funeral March of a Marionette" by Charles Gounod, which is best known as the main theme for Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
According to the book It's Only a Movie, Hitchcock said: "There was an ending written which wasn't used, but I rather liked it. No one agreed with me except my colleague at home [his wife Alma Reville]. Everyone told me that you couldn't have a letdown ending after all that. Paul Newman would have thrown the formula away. After what he has gone through, after everything we have endured with him, he just tosses it. It speaks to the futility of it all, and it's in keeping with the kind of naivete of the character, who is no professional spy, and who will certainly retire from that nefarious business."
There are a few distinctive sequences/shots. The scene where Newman is being chased through the museum by an unseen man is done with long shots of Newman walking through the empty halls with nothing but the echo of his footsteps and the echo of the footsteps of his pursuer. The suspense builds until Newman exits onto the street, and we think he has gotten away. The suspense resumes when we find Gromek has somehow followed him which leads to the scene the film is most known for: murder by oven. Hitchcock prolonged the scene to show how difficult it can be to kill someone quietly who is resisting. There is also a subtle twist of having the German authority getting gassed that echoes the Nazi gas chambers.
Unfortunately, these scenes display some of the sloppy writing. How did Gromek track him down when he clearly leaves before Gromek has exited the museum? Not only did he not see where he went, he arrives only minutes later so we can't even assume he tracked him down through the cab company. How did he suffocate in an open oven in a largely empty room while Armstrong and the woman were unaffected six inches from him? Why didn't she just brain him with the shovel she hit his kneecaps with? Why did Gromek never yell for help with the cabbie right outside? We're also required to make some leaps of faith in how the ballerina figured out they were hiding in the luggage or how they moved through the streets of Berlin undisguised and virtually unrecognized with a widely publicized manhunt looking for them.
In a minor role, Lila Kedrova shines as the Countess Kuchinska. She is a very sympathetic figure as a woman needing only a sponsor in America to be allowed to leave East Germany. She is a reminder of how desperate people were to flee from behind the Iron Curtain, and the film does serve as a depiction of the daily paranoia of living in a closed society where everyone is a potential informant to the secret police.
Out of five bananas, I give it:
Bernard Herrmann wrote the original score, but Universal Pictures executives convinced Hitchcock that it needed to be more upbeat. Hitchcock and Herrmann had a major disagreement, the score was dropped, and they never worked together again. The resultant score is too lighthearted for what is a rather serious film and is at times jarring in the context of what is occurring on-screen. It's hard to believe Herrmann wouldn't have provided a better, and more appropriate, score.
In the shot in which Alfred Hitchcock's cameo occurs, the music briefly changes to "Funeral March of a Marionette" by Charles Gounod, which is best known as the main theme for Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
According to the book It's Only a Movie, Hitchcock said: "There was an ending written which wasn't used, but I rather liked it. No one agreed with me except my colleague at home [his wife Alma Reville]. Everyone told me that you couldn't have a letdown ending after all that. Paul Newman would have thrown the formula away. After what he has gone through, after everything we have endured with him, he just tosses it. It speaks to the futility of it all, and it's in keeping with the kind of naivete of the character, who is no professional spy, and who will certainly retire from that nefarious business."
There are a few distinctive sequences/shots. The scene where Newman is being chased through the museum by an unseen man is done with long shots of Newman walking through the empty halls with nothing but the echo of his footsteps and the echo of the footsteps of his pursuer. The suspense builds until Newman exits onto the street, and we think he has gotten away. The suspense resumes when we find Gromek has somehow followed him which leads to the scene the film is most known for: murder by oven. Hitchcock prolonged the scene to show how difficult it can be to kill someone quietly who is resisting. There is also a subtle twist of having the German authority getting gassed that echoes the Nazi gas chambers.
Unfortunately, these scenes display some of the sloppy writing. How did Gromek track him down when he clearly leaves before Gromek has exited the museum? Not only did he not see where he went, he arrives only minutes later so we can't even assume he tracked him down through the cab company. How did he suffocate in an open oven in a largely empty room while Armstrong and the woman were unaffected six inches from him? Why didn't she just brain him with the shovel she hit his kneecaps with? Why did Gromek never yell for help with the cabbie right outside? We're also required to make some leaps of faith in how the ballerina figured out they were hiding in the luggage or how they moved through the streets of Berlin undisguised and virtually unrecognized with a widely publicized manhunt looking for them.
In a minor role, Lila Kedrova shines as the Countess Kuchinska. She is a very sympathetic figure as a woman needing only a sponsor in America to be allowed to leave East Germany. She is a reminder of how desperate people were to flee from behind the Iron Curtain, and the film does serve as a depiction of the daily paranoia of living in a closed society where everyone is a potential informant to the secret police.
Out of five bananas, I give it:
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