Torn Curtain

In 1965 Michael Armstrong, a U.S. physicist and rocket scientist, is travelling to a conference in Copenhagen with his assistant and fiancée, Sarah Sherman. Armstrong receives a radiogram to pick up a book in Copenhagen; it contains a message which says, "Contact in case of emergency." He tells Sherman he is going to Stockholm, but she discovers he is flying to East Berlin and follows him. When they land, he is welcomed by representatives of the East German government. Sherman realizes that Armstrong has defected and is appalled that, given the circumstances of the Cold War, if she stays with him, she will likely never see her home or family again. Armstrong visits a contact, a "farmer", where it is revealed that his defection is in fact a ruse to gain the confidence of the East German scientific establishment in order to learn how much their chief scientist Gustav Lindt and, by extension, the Soviet Union know about anti-missile systems. Armstrong has made preparations to return to the West via an escape network known as . However, he is followed to the farm by his appointed chaperone, Hermann Gromek, an East German security officer. Gromek realizes what is and that Armstrong is a double agent, and as Gromek is calling the police, a tortuous struggle commences that ends with Gromek being killed by Armstrong and the farmer's wife. Gromek and his motorcycle are buried on the land. The taxicab driver who drove Armstrong to the farm, however, had also seen Gromek arrive. When he sees Gromek reported missing in the newspaper, he contacts the police. Visiting the physics faculty of Karl Marx University in Leipzig the next day, Armstrong's interview with the scientists ends abruptly when he is questioned by security officials about the missing Gromek. The faculty try to interrogate Sherman about her knowledge of the American "Gamma Five" anti-missile program, but she refuses to cooperate and runs from the room, even though she has agreed to defect to East Germany. Armstrong catches up with her to confide his actual motives and asks her to go along with the ruse. Armstrong finally goads Professor Lindt into revealing his anti-missile equations in a pique over what Lindt believes are Armstrong's mathematical mistakes. When Lindt hears over the university's loudspeaker system that Armstrong and Sherman are being sought for questioning, he realizes that he has given up his secrets while learning nothing in return. Armstrong and Sherman escape from the school with the help of the university clinic physician Dr. Koska. Pursued by the Stasi, the couple travel to East Berlin, led by Mr. Jacobi in a decoy bus operated by the network. Roadblocks, highway robbery by Soviet Army deserters, and bunching with the "real" bus result in the police becoming aware of the deception, and everyone aboard is forced to flee. While they are looking for the Friedrichstraße post office, the two encounter the exiled Polish countess Kuczynska, who leads them there in hopes of being sponsored for a U.S. visa. When they are spotted, Kuczynska trips the pursuing guard, allowing Armstrong and Sherman to escape to their next destination. Two men approach them on the pavement, one of whom is the "farmer". He gives them tickets to the ballet as part of a plan to smuggle them to Sweden that evening inside the ballet troupe's luggage. Attending the ballet and waiting to be picked up, they are spotted and reported to the police by the lead ballerina, who flew to East Berlin on the same airplane as Armstrong. Armstrong and Sherman escape through the crowd after shouting "fire". An aide hides them in two hampers of costumes, and they are ferried across the Baltic Sea to Sweden on an East German freighter. The ballerina, who is also on board, sees the aide speak to two hampers as they are lifted onto the pier. She informs the guards and the hampers are shot with a machine gun. It is then revealed that Armstrong and Sherman were in two different hampers. The aide had noticed the ballerina's suspicions and had intentionally spoken to the wrong hampers, so that the three could swim to shore during the commotion. They safely arrive in Sweden. ==Cast==

Background By the time Torn Curtain, his fiftieth film, was conceived, Hitchcock was the most famous film director in Hollywood, having already reached the pinnacle of commercial success six years before with Psycho (1960). Audiences eagerly anticipated his next film. To find a gripping plot, Hitchcock turned toward the spy thriller genre, which was greatly in fashion since the early 1960s with the success of the James Bond series starting in 1962 with Dr. No. Hitchcock had already found success in that genre many times, most recently in 1959 with North by Northwest. Hitchcock was particularly intrigued about Maclean's life in the Soviet Union and about his wife Melinda Marling, who followed her husband behind the Iron Curtain a year later with their three children. Against his will, the physicist is followed to East Berlin by his fiancée and assistant, who decides to remain loyal to him regardless of his intentions. The twist of the story is that Professor Armstrong is in fact a member of a secret spy ring, and he has defected only with the goal of stealing a formula from an East German scientist. Although intrigued, Nabokov declined the project, feeling that he knew very little about political thrillers. As the original focus of the plot was on the female lead, the spy's girlfriend, the script was commissioned early in 1965 to Irish-Canadian writer Brian Moore, who was known for successfully tackling female characters. His well-regarded first novel, Judith Hearne, centers on an alcoholic Belfast spinster. In addition to this, Moore had adapted his own novel The Luck of Ginger Coffey into a film the previous year. and that he had "a profound ignorance of human motivation". To polish the dialogue and improve the script, Hitchcock hired British authors Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall, known for their screenplays for Whistle Down the Wind (1961), A Kind of Loving (1962), and Billy Liar (1963), the latter based on the novel by Waterhouse. They rewrote some dialogue on a day-to-day basis as the film was shot. However, their contribution was restricted by the director's resistance to change and concern for detail. His notes to them were along the lines of the following: "Scene 88. We should eliminate the floor concierge. My information is that they do not have these in East Berlin; Casting Universal Pictures executives insisted on famous stars being cast as the leads. Paul Newman and Julie Andrews were imposed on Hitchcock by studio president Lew Wasserman rather than being his personal choices. The director felt that the stars were ill-suited to their roles, while their salaries of $750,000 took a big part of the film's $5 million budget. Principal photography of the film began on 18 October 1965 on Stage 18 at the Universal back lot in Los Angeles. The shooting schedule lasted three months, including a two-week hiatus while Paul Newman recuperated from a chin infection. Filming was completed in mid-February 1966. The working relationship between Hitchcock and Newman was problematic. Perhaps the best known scene is the fight to the death between Armstrong and Gromek, a gruesome, prolonged struggle. In conversation with François Truffaut, Hitchcock said that he included the scene to show the audience how difficult it can be to kill a man because a number of spy thrillers at the time made killing look effortless. Alfred Hitchcock's cameo is a signature occurrence in most of his films. In Torn Curtain he can be seen (eight minutes into the film) sitting in the lobby of the Hotel d'Angleterre holding a baby. The music playing at this point is an adaptation of Funeral March of a Marionette, the theme for Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Steven Spielberg told James Lipton on Inside the Actors Studio that as a young man he sneaked onto the soundstage to observe the filming and remained for 45 minutes before an assistant producer asked him to leave. The production occurred during the 1965 Watts race riots, leaving Kieling disgusted with American society. As a result, after the film was released, he defected to East Germany in real life, calling the United States "the most dangerous enemy of humanity in the world today" and guilty of "crimes against the Negro and the people of Vietnam." Music Two scores were written for the film. The first was written by Bernard Herrmann, a frequent contributor to Hitchcock's work. Hitchcock and Universal asked Herrmann for a pop and jazz-influenced soundtrack and even hoped Herrmann might write a song for lead actress Julie Andrews to perform. However, the score Herrmann provided was not what Hitchcock and the studio wanted, and his revisions failed to satisfy them. Hitchcock and Herrmann ended their long-time collaboration, and John Addison was approached to write the score. Although the Addison score was issued commercially in 1966 (and has been re-released), the Herrmann score has been re-recorded and reissued several times, eclipsing Addison's in terms of available versions. Recordings of Herrmann's original studio sessions exist and have circulated online. Elmer Bernstein made the first commercial recording of the score with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra on Warner Bros. Records in 1978. Esa-Pekka Salonen recorded a suite from the film as part of a Herrmann album with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra in 1996. Joel McNeely subsequently recorded an expanded version with the National Philharmonic Orchestra for Varese Sarabande Records in 2010. In the climactic scene involving the ballet at the East Berlin theatre, the music was excerpted from Tchaikovsky's Francesca da Rimini. ==Release==

Rating Torn Curtain was released without any rating on 14 July 1966 (see original 1966 movie poster above). However, the film was given an "R" (for "Restricted") under the MPAA film rating system that took effect on 1 November 1968. It was ultimately re-rated PG in 1984. Reception After its premiere the film was criticized, especially in terms of its production technology, as being old-fashioned. The film was nevertheless a minor hit for Hitchcock, making $7 million in the United States alone. The film was not as well received by critics. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times called the film "a pathetically undistinguished spy picture, and the obvious reason is that the script is a collection of what Mr. Hitchcock most eschews—clichés." Penelope Houston, writing for Sight & Sound, commented: "What went wrong here, one suspects, was something basic in the story line." The reviewer in Variety said: "Some good plot ideas are marred by routine dialogue, and a too relaxed pace contributed to a dull overlength," adding "Hitchcock freshens up his bag of tricks in a good potpourri which becomes a bit stale through a noticeable lack of zip and pacing." Richard Schickel, writing in Life, concluded: "Hitchcock is tired to the point where what once seemed highly personal style is now repetitions of past triumphs." Torn Curtain holds a 63% rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes based on 32 reviews, with an average rating of 6.40/10. ==See also==