Torn Curtain (1966) Reviews

• Torn Cardboard

  littlemartinarocena2007-12-14

  It may have sounded like a perfect commercial operation. Two huge box office stars, Paul Newman and Julie Andrews with Hitchcock no less, at the helm. Paul Newman and Julie Andrews have the sexual chemistry of two white slices of bread and Hitchcock didn't have Bernard Herrman at his side. In fact Hitch and Herrmann broke off their successful marriage during this production. Pity. I love Hitchcock. There is a detachment here never seen before in a Hitch flick. As if the master was tired or uninterested. Paul Newman seems in a hurry to get the hell out of there - no pun intended. Julie Andrews seems bewildered and whatever little she's ask to do it's way beneath her. Lila Kedrova comes as a welcome relief. I can't believe the ones who accused her of being over the top. Over the top? Of course she was over the top, brilliantly. I love actresses and actors who chew the scenery but are believable, moving, entertaining, hysterically funny...Bette Davis, Charles Laughton, Geraldine Page, Kim Stanley... Lila Kedrova chew the scenery but you didn't forget her and in "Torn Courtain" you were grateful for someone chewing something. I also enjoyed Tamara Toumanova in her funny self parody. Her spotting Newman at the theater was one of the highlights of this minor Hitchkock film.

• In many ways, Hitchcock often wore the same pants.

  plaidpotato2004-01-28

  Hitchcock made a few clunkers in his day, but this isn't one of them, despite its reputation. I don't know if I could get away with saying it's one of Hitchcock's ten best features, but I found it to be easily one of his top ten most entertaining. I enjoyed watching Torn Curtain a lot more than some of his established classics, like Notorious and the Birds, even if it's not quite as psychologically complex as those films. The main thing about Torn Curtain is the photography. It's full of pretty pictures--one of the most beautifully filmed of all Hitchcock's films, with lots bold swaths of primary colors and attractive and constantly changing locations--some scenes look like they were shot on location, while others are wonderfully artificial studio creations, and they're blended together perfectly. Another cool thing about Torn Curtain is that it's constantly on the move. It never stagnates. The pacing is deliberate, but engaging. It's well-plotted and suspenseful. It's full of fantastic little directorial touches, like the scene where Paul Newman ducks into a bathroom to read his secret spy message. Hitchcock never shows us the room. He keeps the camera tight on Paul Newman, so we can't tell who or what might be in that room with us, just out of frame. It's totally simple, but it creates a highly effective feeling of uneasiness and paranoia. This movie also features one of the strangest and best-filmed death scenes I've ever seen. Hitchcock was still on top of his game here. Most of the bad reviews for Torn Curtain seem to focus on the acting. I don't know why. A lot of people bash Julie Andrews just for being Julie Andrews, and that hardly seems fair. Typecasting sucks. And while I wouldn't say she turned in one of the most memorable and overpowering performances of all time, her role didn't call for that. Torn Curtain wasn't a complex character study, it was a plot-based thriller. And Julie Andrews was perfectly adequate for that, even pretty good when she was given a chance to be. Paul Newman was perfect. He wasn't his usual charming self here. He was grim and tight-lipped and stiff--as would be appropriate for a scientist feeling out of his league, playing a spy in a hostile country, having to pretend to be a traitor--a role which he found objectionable--all with his girlfriend annoyingly tagging along and complicating everything. I understand that Paul Newman found working for Hitchcock objectionable. It makes me wonder if Hitch deliberately made life unpleasant for Paul just to get this kind of tooth-gritting performance from him. Whatever, Hitch and Paul were both great. And so was this film.

• Stealing What's Locked Up in the Grey Cells

  bkoganbing2006-06-23

  Paul Newman nuclear physicist has volunteered for an unusual espionage mission. He's to fake a defection in order to get close to East German scientist Ludwig Donath and find out what advances he personally has given the Soviet bloc. As he says to agent Mort Mills, he's one of the few people in the world who would know exactly what to look for. The trick is to make Donath write it down. Nice plan, except for that fact that intrepid Julie Andrews, Newman's fiancé suspects something's up and follows him first to Copenhagen and then East Berlin. It would have run so much easier without her, but then again there would have been no film. This was Alfred Hitchcock's last star vehicle. His last three films were done with second rank players. At the time this was made Julie Andrews was fresh from Mary Poppins and had all kinds of roles offered her. I suppose she couldn't turn down a chance to appear in a Hitchcock film, but she and Newman really have no chemistry at all. I suppose Newman also wanted to work with Hitchcock. There are some good moments in Torn Curtain. The highlight easily has to be the killing of an East German security agent by Newman and Carolyn Conwell with the creative use of a gas stove. The agent is played by German actor Wolfgang Kieling and has the best role in the film. Funny how during World War II, Germans were sometimes shown as colossally stupid, Kieling is not. He's a very tough and shrewd adversary who catches on to Newman's scheme and has to be eliminated. Hitchcock also stole from himself here. The ride and Newman and Andrews take on a bus from Leipzig to East Berlin that is stage managed by David Opatoshu is ripped off from Saboteur and the bus passengers are just like the circus people in Saboteur. Good, but done before. Devoted fans of the stars and of Alfred Hitchcock will want to see Torn Curtain, others might want to for curiosity's sake.

• Better Than What It Was Made Out to Be

  Hitch-262000-09-09

  Hitchcock's 50th movie, Torn Curtain, is considered by many experts to be a major disappointment, but I didn't see it that way. It is not one of Hitch's top 10, but it is still a very good movie. Both Paul Newman and Julie Andrews give fine performances and I loved Ludwig Donath, who was excellent. The scene in which Professor Armstrong murders Gromek is classic Hitchcock, and the blackboard scene between Newman and Donath is great, too. I think that this movie suffers from the fact that the 2 main stars were really mismatched for Hitch. There is a story that Hitchcock along with his wife insisted that Newman drink wine with them. Newman refused, wanting a beer instead and he wanted to drink it from the can! This request mortified Hitch and his wife. Needless to say those 2 had their differences. As for Andrews, she was suffering from "Keanu Reeves" syndrome. "Keanu Reeves" syndrome is when an actor or actress is hugely successful in a role and then is never taken seriously in any other role, especially something radically different, e.g. Reeves as Ted in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure was never taken seriously in movies like Speed, Point Break, etc. The same for Andrews who was coming off Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music. This is unfair, but it is true. I feel that if this movie was remade with 2 people who were more suited to the roles, then this become a masterpiece.

• less than Hitch's best

  Dtkoyzis2001-02-03

  The first time I watched "Torn Curtain," I grew bored and turned it off before it was over. I've watched it in its entirety more than once since then. It's difficult not to conclude that the master director's age was beginning to take its toll by 1966. It could have been a great film except for some major flaws. First, the main characters. Newman and Andrews look distinctly ill-at-ease and their acting is wooden. There is very nearly no chemistry between them, and viewers are not really drawn into their somewhat implausible situation. Both actors are compelling in other films, but for some reason not in this one. Second, Hitchcock would have done better to keep his villains' identity less specific. In "The Lady Vanishes", "The Thirty-nine Steps," and "North by Northwest," the identity of the foreign agents is left deliberately vague and thus little plausibility need be attached to their actions. Here they are East German communists, of which we know rather a lot. Third, there are inconsistencies in the plot. At one point Newman and Andrews are forced to go out into an open space to avoid being overheard. But in another scene a pro-western spy communicates confidential information to Newman in a hospital room, seemingly oblivious to the possibility of wiretaps. Finally, there's John Addison's score, which seems to have been written quite independently of the film's action. A suspenseful scene is inappropriately matched with cheerful, melodic music. Everyone knows, of course, that Hitch's longtime musical collaborator, Bernard Herrmann, wrote a mostly complete score for the film, but the two had a falling out on the set and Herrmann was dismissed. Another example of poor judgement on Hitchcock's part. Herrmann's score would have immeasurably improved a mediocre film. (Look at "Obsession" nearly a decade later.) With all the recent film restorations, I would love to see someone redo "Torn Curtain" and put in as much of Herrmann's score as the composer was able to finish. (But perhaps there would be copyright problems.) Had Herrmann's score been used, the murder sequence in the farmhouse might have become as famous as the shower scene in "Psycho." As I was watching the protagonists flee through the East German landscape in their efforts to reach the west, I found myself thinking that, if they had only waited another twenty-three years, the wall would have come down anyway and they could simply have walked out! That's how much their plight gripped me.