Two Critics Pan Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain

Friends and fellow film buffs: Brian Wilkins and Mike Gutierrez have written wonderful guest posts here at Cary Grant Won’t Eat You—Brian, on fighting in Sword and Sandals films, and Mike, on his ideal casting for Hitchcock remakes. Today they’re joining the second annual Alfred Hitchcock blogathon to consider what the famous director could have been thinking with Torn Curtain (1966).

B: This all started because I had a memory of a movie where a drunken Paul Newman, at the Nobel Ceremony in Stockholm, chats up beautiful blondes and a physicist who may or may not be trying to defect to East Germany. So when Torn Curtain was still available, I texted Mike and said we should grab it.

There’s only one problem.

Torn Curtain is a Paul Newman and Julie Andrews vehicle, about a conference in Copenhagen that ends in a physicist possibly defecting to East Germany. And it’s not the movie I remembered. That movie is The Prize directed by Mark Robson. This was Torn Curtain, and as Mike put it…

M: Torn Curtain is a deeply stupid movie.

And it shouldn’t be.

It’s 1966.  Newman and Andrews are two of the biggest stars in the world. It’s true that Hitchcock was winding down by then, but he’d only done The Birds three years earlier. The three of them coming together for some Cold War intrigue sounds like a sure-fire hit, or at least a fun two hours. But that’s not what happened. And, frankly, I’m not sure what happened during the film.

Newman is “defecting,” but no one believes that for a minute. Andrews is his doting girlfriend who follows him to East Germany and decides to stay with him–betraying her country for a guy who has been lying to her. The East German secret police announce themselves as the “secret police,” which doesn’t seem like something the secret police should do. It’s not clear if Newman is working with the US government or is going completely rogue, but somehow he has ties to the resistance even though he’s just a scientist.

I could keep going–the plot is inane, the characters inconsistent, and Newman and Andrews seemed to have lost their charms on the flight to Berlin–but you get the point. So, Brian, what do you see as the reason this movie went off the rails?

B: They squeezed all the fun out of the movie. In every single case where you could find a joke or a bit of dash, they threw a lead blanket on it. I’m mostly blaming the writer.

But here’s the thing: I didn’t think it was humanly possible to have zero chemistry with Paul Newman. I’m pretty sure even inanimate objects have chemistry with Paul Newman. Even his crutch in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof looks into being leaned on. Julie Andrews looks like he started every take by mansplaining parliamentary procedure.

M: Do you think they took out the fun or had no intention of making a fun movie? I’m thinking the writer considered this his grand epic about a deadly serious topic and wanted to make a bold statement about love and patriotism and the threat of the Soviets; that he believed it was high art, Oscar-bait.

And tonally, it keeps shifting from a romance to faux-intrigue to, well, we should probably talk about how Paul Newman and some farmer’s wife re-imagined Sylvia Plath’s death on the Stasi officer. That scene manages the incredible trick of being both disturbing and boring.

B: Let me do some research <looks at Wikipedia for 2 minutes>…oh, shit, this was a hot mess. Hitchcock shopped the idea to Nabokov, who turned it down (genius) then gave the script to Brian Moore (shortlisted 3 three times for the Booker prize) who really should have known better. Moore complained Hitch had no sense of characters. Hitchcock complained Moore wasn’t funny. So Hitchcock thought he was making North by Northwest and Moore thought he was writing…a boring version of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold?

But to the murder. Listen, I hate to get all professional about this, but there are a million things to murder someone with in a kitchen other than a gas stove. It’s almost like the house frau in question was like, “Do you know how hard it is to get Stasi brains out of a cast iron pan? I just seasoned it!”

M: I just spent five minutes re-imagining this film as if Nabokov wrote it. Then I started imagining if he’d written The Sound of Music. “No, you cannot sing the Nazi’s away, Julie Andrews. No.” I digress.

B: Rolling pin. Cleaning chemicals. Towel garrote. Meat hammer. Fork.

M: Ice pick?

B: Only if he’s a real Communist (yes, that’s a Trotsky joke, David Ives fans).

M: This was one of the big set pieces, the one that shows us that Newman isn’t just a dainty scientist but a badass with a Ph.D. Now, you’re married to a scientist–who I’m certain would have used a paring knife—

B: Correct. Or poison.

M: …and you’ve met scores of scientists in your life: is there anything about Newman’s character that seems the least bit authentic? Or, a better question, what do you think Newman thought he was supposed to be? He’s never been so charmless. He has that great, knowing smirk in everything he does. What movie did he think he was in?

B:  I think Newman read the character as a boring CIA agent the whole time. His character “starts in Washington” and ends with a “teaching position.” He’s just a physicist who couldn’t actually cut it, but as a bureaucrat briefing real spies on what to steal, he’s sort of useful. And I think Paul Newman would hate that man intensely. I’m guessing he needed to fund some sort of charity for kids with horrific cancer. Seriously, that man is a sexy, sexy saint.

M: I’m not sure the first Mrs. Paul Newman would agree. There is a voodoo doll of Joanne Woodward out there floating in the aether.

B: I started wondering if Joanne Woodward would be better casting than Julie Andrews, but, honestly, I don’t think anyone could have chewing gum and twined a performance from this script. Is there any trace of Hitchcock at all with the escape scene?

M: Sure. It’s an elaborate set piece–a bus chase before sneaking onto a ship–that’s supposed to be Hitchcock’s version of how he’d escape past the Berlin Wall. But it feels like a knock-off version of a Hitchcock climax, sort of like how 2 Days in the Valley ripped off Tarantino. The problem is that Andrews and Newman are passive characters in the escape. They’re sitting on a bus driven by someone else, and then shuffled onto a boat where they are shoved into baskets to sit in their own filth for days (weeks?) while someone else pilots the ship. Passive. It’s like Hitchcock forgot what made for great Hitchcock.

B: I never even thought of how this would be Hitchcock’s personal fantasy of how to get away: “Well, I’m certainly not going to run. And riding a motorcycle sounds sweaty. Perhaps I could just drift peacefully into freedom?”

M: Here’s the thing: Cary Grant kills a dude and saves the girl in North by Northwest.

Paul Newman sits in the back of the bus and hopes no one hurts him.

B: I think this film needs more dynamite, there, Butch. I tried to think of something I liked about this film but I’m coming up as empty as a housefrau looking for a murder weapon in a gun closet.

M: Yeah, I’ve got nothing. In the end, I found myself rooting for the Stasi.

B: Well, thank you for your patience, kind readers. I hope you’ve enjoyed being warned off what has to be in my top 5 worst movies of all time. See The Prize instead for all your Paul Newman Cold War-related hijinks. And …oh! Bear Island with Julie Andrews. It’s got the UN, it’s set off the coast of Norway, and there’s a possibly gold-filled U-Boat.

M: That sounds awesome. I’ve never seen it. Let me do some research <looks at Wikipedia for 2 minutes>…. You did it again: You got Julie Andrews confused with Vanessa Redgrave.

B: That’s more telling about my fantasy life than I would like. MEA CULPA!

Check out the other posts in Maddy Loves Her Classic Film‘s The Second Annual Alfred Hitchcock Blogathon, including her post on Rebecca!