Torn Curtain | | Cast : | Paul Newman, Julie Andrews | | Director : | Alfred Hitchcock | | Studio : | Universal Studios | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen | | Released Date : | July 14, 1966 | | DVD Released Date : | March 06, 2001 | | Language : | French (Dubbed), Spanish (Subtitled), English (Dubbed), English (Original Language), French (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | PG (Parental Guidance Suggested) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | June 24, 2005 | | Summary | great film | Content
 | haha...its funny to see this dvd with a PG rating when an earlier VHS release had an R one!!! This is a great movie and reccomended to ALL Hitchcock fans. |
| Rating | | | Date | May 12, 2005 | | Summary | As poor as you expected | Content
| As much as I love to fight on behalf of underdog, underrated works of art, I just can't find any good reason to redeem "Torn Curtain" from its lowly status in the pantheon. In fact, it's likely the most unimpressive color film Hitchcock ever made. Is it unwatchable? Certainly not. Paul Newman is amusingly flinty, Julie Andrews is tolerable to look at, and, very occasionally, there is some recognizable (but nowhere inspired) Hitchcock mise-en-scene to chew on. Nonetheless, the overall mediocrity of the film can become excruciating.
As the most recent reviewer has ably noted, the implausibilities here are outrageous. Would a prized defector really be allowed to walk out of the hotel the morning after his arrival and disappear who knows where? And what the devil was the purpose of running into the museum to start with (and why was there not a soul present to protect East German cultural treasures from the grubby proletariat)? And why did he have to go all the way out to the farm, exposing himself to such risk, for the sake of an uninstructive conversation on a tractor, which could have been had much less riskily by the American agent coming to Berlin to find Dr. Armstrong instead? And where the heck was the old chap when they were fighting for their lives in the farmhouse?!?!?
And this is just the comparably better first act.
Indeed, even that famous farmhouse fight is, in my opinion, a somewhat lesser Hitchcock setpiece, though it suffers by the context of the film it's inclosed within. As for the other big setpieces-- the bus ride and the ballet sequence-- there is simply nothing to be said in their defense. The bus sequence is excruciatingly slow and laughably ridiculous, and the ballet is simply a nonstarter. As for the coffehouse interlude with our Polish countess, I'm not quite sure whether to laugh or cry. Perhaps it is a comment on the pathos of those trapped inside the Iron Curtain, or perhaps Hitchcock is simply amusing himself with comic relief, or relieving himself, as it were, of responsibility for this film. At any rate, it is a more excusable exercise in mannerism than that impossible Dr. Lindt, who we might have hoped had choked on a bite of ham somewhere in the intervening years since he left Constance Petersen behind. But why is "Torn Curtain"s East Germany about as menacing as Michael Barone's notion of Sweden anyway? The universities are all modern, the skirts are reasonably short, and their museum, after all, is hardly "strictly for the birds". One might almost suspect Hitchcock of subverting Cold War hysteria, except that he surely understood the totalitarian mindset all too well. Rather, I blame a slack script and Hitch's own understandable sense of distance from this pitiful project. After making "Psycho", "The Birds" and "Marnie", he could be excused for making something even much worse. |
| Rating | | | Date | April 03, 2005 | | Summary | A Lot of Cringe Factor | Content
| The 'spycraft' as Le Carre would call it in this movie is several notches below Three Stooges - I have no trouble suspending belief for Hitchcock's North by Northwest but catching a CAB to a resistance member's farmhouse,outside East Berlin??? the elaborately stupid contact in the Copenhagen bookstore and much else of this level ruins most of the movie for me.
I am a Hitchcock lover and do admire the one set piece (the murder of Gromek)the ballet was a rehash of several other and better such scenes, Lila Kedrova overacts outrageously and though I loved her in Zorba the Greek - here she is but a collection of tics and mannerisms. The 'lovable' old Liepzig professor was stale when Michael Chekhov did the same shtick in Spellbound. Most exquisitely beautiful of all to me is the classic Hitchcock opening scenes - on the boat. The cold dining room, everyone in their coats, frozen water glass, the various name tags, the two name tags of Andrews and Neuman on their coats in his stateroom and then... Hud in bed with Maria von Trapp Yecccch! One of the worst pairings in movie history. |
| Rating | | | Date | February 24, 2005 | | Summary | "Star Wars" technology ahead of its time | Content
| Most amusing aspect is that Paul Newman, as a professor pretending to defect to East Germany, is out to steal Communist missile secrets -- anti-missile missile technology, in fact, that would eliminate the threat of nuclear war. Must have been one of Reagan's favorite movies. |
| Rating | | | Date | November 08, 2004 | | Summary | So near, yet so far ... | Content
| ACTUAL RATING: 2-1/2 Stars
Torn Curtain has three scenes that make it memorable: the murder of the East German agent Gromek, the bus chase and Lila Kedrova's short, but memorable, part as the woman who attempts to help Paul Newman and Julie Andrews in exchange for sponsorship to the United States. However, in between those scenes is a ho-hum Cold War story, Snidely Whiplash villans and, most unusual for Hitchcock, technical sloppiness (the scene where Newman tells Andrews he's not really a defector was obviously filmed on a soundstage despite the outdoor location). In addition, Newman and Andrews have very little chemistry onscreen -- it's easy to see why they never worked together again. In addition, Hitchcock made the huge mistake of casting off Bernard Herrmann and his musical score in favor of a more commerical score. Vertigo, North By Northwest and Psycho were immeasurably enhanced by Herrmann's scores. Torn Curtain, along with other substandard films like I Confess, The Wrong Man and Marnie show that even the greatest director of all time had misfires from time to time. |
|
