Torn Curtain (1966)
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

Film Review

Torn Curtain, Alfred Hitchcock's 50th film, is the one which is probably the director's least regarded work, an all too obvious attempt to emulate the new wave of spy thrillers that were emerging in the mid-1960s.  It was certainly one of Hitchcock's least commercially successful films, even if it did turn a small profit.  After the equally lukewarm reception of The Birds (1963) and Marnie (1964), the muted reaction to Torn Curtain merely reinforced a growing perception that Hitchcock had had his day.  Indeed, this may well have been the end of Hitchcock's career had a certain Frenchman named François Truffaut not decided to publish a book in 1967 that promoted Hitchcock as one of the world's greatest living filmmakers.

Torn Curtain is a film very much of its time, a Cold War spy thriller inspired by the defection of two British civil servants, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, to Russia in 1951.  It is best known for the horrific sequence in which the lead character, assisted by a farmer's wife, kills a German police chief with the paraphernalia of a farmhouse kitchen.  Hitchcock wanted to show how difficult it can be for one ordinary human being to kill another, in stark contrast to the ease with which characters are normally dispatched in spy films.

Unlike Hitchcock's other 1960s films, the criticisms levelled against Torn Curtain is largely justified, and it is by far the least polished and least enjoyable of his films.   The film's failings are almost entirely the result of difficulties that arose during its troubled production.  Whilst it has some strengths (notably the location photography), it is hampered by weak dialogue, colourless performances and some disappointing effects (excessive use of blue screen to avoid location shoots).

Hitchcock resented having Julie Andrews and Paul Newman foisted on him by his studio, and this experience led him never again to cast big name actors in any of his subsequent films.  Working with Newman was particularly difficult, partly because the actor had grave misgivings over the script, but mainly because his approach to his metier (so-called Method Acting) was something that was completely at variance with Hitchcock's somewhat stylised approach to filmmaking.   The result of this obvious miscast is that neither lead actor manages to give a performance that is engaging or convincing, and without a strong, sympathetic lead character, the film appears soulless.

The film's single biggest failing is its screenplay.  The original script was judged to be so poor that Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall were called in to totally rewrite the dialogue.  However, there was not enough time to resolve all of the scripting issues since the shooting dates were tightly constrained by the availability of the lead actress.  So, filming began with a script which had serious deficiencies, where characters are undeveloped and clichéd and the plot lacking in coherence and credibility.

There were also problems with the scoring of the film.  Bernard Herrmann, Hitchcock's long time collaborator, was originally hired, but his score failed to meet the requirements of the studio or Hitchcock, who were looking for something more upbeat and modern.   Herrmann was replaced with John Addison, who had recently won an Oscar for his work on Tom Jones (1963).  In retrospect, this was another mistake - Addison's score lacks the subtlety of Herrmann's and in a few places tends to destroy rather then build the tension.

Viewed today, Torn Curtain is the one film that Hitchcock made in Hollywood which looks the most dated.  Compared with similar thrillers of this era, it feels characterless and looks poorly made.  In contrast to his contemporaries, Hitchcock would keep location shooting to an absolute minimum, preferring to shoot exteriors on unconvincing studio sets rather than go out on location.  No film suffers more because of this than Torn Curtain. Try watching the seemingly interminable sequence in the coach near the end of the film without cringing or hitting the fast-forward button on your DVD remote .  The film has one or two moments of brilliance, but overall watching it feels like spending a dreary winter month in East Berlin at the height of the Cold War, in the company of people you just can't wait to get away from.

Film Synopsis

On his arrival in East Berlin, American physicist Michael Armstrong announces his decision to defect, offering his scientific expertise to the Soviet Bloc.  Against his wishes, his fiancée Sarah Sherman follows him and insists on staying with him.  What she does not know is that Armstrong's defection is a ruse to allow him to gain the confidence of the East German scientist Lindt, who holds the solution to a problem he has been unable to crack.  Unfortunately, security operative Gromek is suspicious of Armstrong and follows him to a farm where the latter makes contact with a member of a secret group that arranges clandestine trips across the Iron Curtain.  When Gromek confronts Armstrong, the latter has no choice but to kill him.  Things are not going quite as planned...