Torn Curtain (4 Stars)

This film was advertised as Alfred Hitchcock's 50th film when it was released. I don't know how the studios reached that number. I checked IMDB, and this seems to be his 51st film. Maybe there's an Alfred Hitchcock society that keeps an official list of the Hitchcock canon, more reliable than IMDB? I'm faced with similar problems as a fan of Klaus Schulze's music. Certain albums such as "Aphrica" and "Drive Inn" were originally marketed as Klaus Schulze albums, but now his publicist (I prefer to call him archivist) Klaus Mueller (kdm) has struck them from the canon because Klaus Schulze wasn't the main creative force for the recordings. Aller Statistik ist schwer!

The film takes place in 1966, which is when the film was made. Professor Michael Armstrong (Paul Newman) and his assistant Sarah (Julie Andrews) are in Denmark for a scientific conference on nuclear weapons. Sarah is more than an assistant, she's also his lover. Instead of attending the conference Michael catches a flight to East Berlin, evidently defecting to the East. Sarah refuses to believe that he would do something like this without telling her, so she pursues him to find out the truth.

There were highly publicised arguments between Hitchcock and the two main stars during the making of the film. Paul Newman liked to talk back and question the decision of directors. This might have been acceptable to other directors, but it was an affront to Hitchcock's autocratic style. Alfred Hitchcock frequently referred to actors as sheep. In his eyes the director makes all the decisions, the actors just do what they're told, i.e. they are "directed". With Julie Andrews it was a different problem. Hitchcock had been talked into casting her, because he was told that she would pull in the crowds after her recent successes in "Mary Poppins" and "The Sound of Music". When he had her in front of him he was disappointed with her acting ability, which he told her very directly. He said that all she could do was sing, not act, but it was too late to get out of the contract.

The film flopped at the box office, but in my eyes it isn't that bad. The biggest problem to me is Julie Andrews, who is definitely the film's weak link. She seems totally out of place rolling around in bed with Paul Newman. I keep expecting her to run through the streets of East Berlin singing "The hills are alive....."

Carolyn Conwell in her first ever film