The Times (10/Aug/1966) - Mr Hitchcock's fiftieth film
(c) The Times (10/Aug/1966)
- keywords: Alfred Hitchcock, Julie Andrews, Leicester Square, London, Lila Kedrova, North by Northwest (1959), Paul Newman, Psycho (1960), Saboteur (1942), Tamara Toumanova, The Wrong Man (1956), Torn Curtain (1966)
Mr. Hitchcock's fiftieth film
Odeon, Leicester Square: Torn Curtain
Doubtless Mr. Hitchcock would not recognize any Graham-Greeneish distinction between his "serious" films and his "entertainments", but it is one that of late we have tended to make for him. Perhaps it is really an artificial distinction — in which case the doubts we may feel about his latest, fiftieth, film on the grounds that it never seems quite to make up its mind which it is may be falsely based. Nevertheless, they persist.
You see, the subject does seem, whichever way one looks at it, cut out for serious treatment, in black-and-white, with a lot of mystery and anguish. A high-ranking American scientist and his fiancée-assistant are taking part in a symposium of scientists cruising up the Norwegian fjords, and apparently loving each other and every moment of it. Suddenly he starts behaving oddly, and then flies off to east Berlin to defect to the communists, his puzzled fiancée in hot pursuit. She loves him. but she is horrified; he loves her, but cannot get his reasons across to her.
It is a nightmare situation which Mr. Hitchcock could so easily, and so superbly treat nightmarishly a la The Wrong Man or Psycho. Instead, oddly, he has chosen to treat the whole thing as a lightweight adventure entertainment: the heroine's mental agonies are rapidly soothed by some quick explanations on a studio hillside which looks like something out of the Ideal Homes garden section (no, of course, he is not a traitor — he is a spy), and then off we go on a very jolly battle of wits.
Once we adjust, and the film adjusts, this is very agreeable and expert. The couple's adventures on the way out of Germany are handled in a straightforward suspense style, but then of that Mr. Hitchcock is a past master. There is a good scene, reminiscent of the dance scene in Saboteur and the auction in North by Northwest, in which hero and heroine are trapped in the middle of a crowded theatre and devise an ingenious escape. There are very funny character-pieces from Lila Kedrova as an eccentric Polish countess and Tamara Toumanova as a slighted ballerina. And it is certain that, at any rate, no one will be bored.
But still a slight feeling of dissatisfaction persists. There is too much careless plotting in the first half, and Mr. Hitchcock's demonstration of how difficult it is in fact to kill someone misfires because the mistakes the would-be killers make are surely not those — equally damaging — that anyone in a similar situation really would make. And the stars, Paul Newman and Julie Andrews, are after all pretty wasted on pasteboard roles, since both are better as actors than as straight star personalities. All the same, the film remains great fun for most of its length, and it would be silly to let regret for what it might have been and is not blind us to the considerable advantages of what it actually is.
Torn Curtain has a gala premiere tomorrow and begins its West End run on Friday.
