Torn Curtain is a 1966 American political thriller spy film directed and produced by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Paul Newman and Julie Andrews, and featuring Lila Kedrova, Hansjörg Felmy, Tamara Toumanova, Ludwig Donath, Wolfgang Kieling and David Opatoshu in supporting roles. Written by Brian Moore, the Cold War narrative concerns an American scientist (Newman) who appears to defect behind the Iron Curtain to East Germany.
The film premiered in the United States on July 14, 1966, and was released by Universal Pictures. In comparison to Hitchcock's previous films, Torn Curtain received comparatively lukewarm reviews, but was a commercial success.
Plot Dr. Michael Armstrong, an American 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 Stasi 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 featuring Tchaikovsky's Francesca da Rimini 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
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 by Charles Gounod, the theme for Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
Production
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.Mc Gilligan, Alfred Hitchcock, p. 657 Hitchcock had already found success in that genre many times, most recently in 1959 with North by Northwest.
The idea behind Torn Curtain came from the defection of British diplomats Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean to the Soviet Union in 1951.Mc Gilligan, Alfred Hitchcock, p. 659 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. With these facts as a starting point, Hitchcock created a plot line involving an American nuclear physicist, Professor Michael Armstrong, defecting to East Germany.Maxford, The A - Z of Hitchcock, p. 264 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.
Writing In autumn 1964 Hitchcock offered to let Vladimir Nabokov, the author of Lolita, who had successfully helped adapt his own novel to a well-regarded film directed by Stanley Kubrick in 1962, write the script.Mc Gilligan, Alfred Hitchcock, p. 658 Although intrigued, Nabokov declined the project, feeling that he knew very little about political thrillers.Mc Gilligan, Alfred Hitchcock, p. 661
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.Mc Gilligan, Alfred Hitchcock, p. 665Mc Gilligan, Alfred Hitchcock, p. 662 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. Moore moved to Hollywood to work on the script. His five-page synopsis, completed on 26 March 1965, already contained two key scenes of the film: Torn Curtain'''s opening aboard a cruise steamer in the Norwegian fjords and the brutal killing of undercover agent Gromek by the American scientist and a farm woman. Moore's final draft, completed by 21st June, pleased neither Hitchcock nor Universal. It lacked the humor and sparkle characteristic of a Hitchcock film. On his part, Moore complained that Hitchcock had "no concept of character"Mc Gilligan, Alfred Hitchcock, p. 663 and that he had "a profound ignorance of human motivation". Brian Moore's own dissatisfaction with the project was reflected in his novel Fergus (1970), which features Bernard Boweri, an unsympathetic character based on Hitchcock.Busby, Character Parts: Who's Really Who in CanLit, p. 32
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.Mc Gilligan, Alfred Hitchcock, p. 669 They rewrote some dialogue on a day-to-day basis as the film was shot.Mc Gilligan, Alfred Hitchcock, p. 670 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; Scene 127 C. I would like to discuss the place where the sausage is carved; On Scene 139, where we had someone describing the Julie Andrews character as beautiful... do you think beautiful is perhaps too much, and cannot we say lovely instead?"
Submitted to arbitration, the Writers Guild gave sole script credits to Moore.Mc Gilligan, Alfred Hitchcock, p. 671
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.Maxford, The A - Z of Hitchcock, p. 265 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.
At the time, Julie Andrews was Hollywood's biggest star after the back-to-back successes of her films Mary Poppins (1964) and The Sound of Music (1965). As she was much in demand, Andrews was available for only a short period of time, and that meant the production of the film was rushed, although Hitchcock was not yet satisfied with the script.
Hitchcock surrounded Newman and Andrews with colorful supporting actors: Lila Kedrova, fresh from winning an Academy Award for Zorba the Greek, as the eccentric and flamboyantly dressed Countess Kuczynska who helps Armstrong and Sherman to escape in return for their sponsoring her to go to America; Tamara Toumanova as the haughty prima ballerina whose limelight Armstrong steals when he arrives in East Berlin; Ludwig Donath as the crotchety professor Lindt, eager to cut the chat and get down to business; and Wolfgang Kieling as the sinister Hermann Gromek, the gum-chewing personal guide the East German authorities provide to shadow Armstrong's every move.
Filming Hitchcock initially wanted to shoot the film entirely on location in the Eastern Bloc but could not because he refused to give East German officials a copy of his screenplay. Moore later said that Hitchcock probably could have secured filming permits in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Poland if he had tried harder.