Torn Curtain (1966)

Film: Torn Curtain (1966)

Stars: Paul Newman, Julie Andrews, Lila Kedrova, Hansjorg Felmy, Tamara Toumanova

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Julie Andrews-click here to learn more about Ms. Andrews (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Yesterday we kicked off our month devoted to Julie Andrews (click the link above for more, you know the drill), but while we usually talk about in our first article how a star became famous, Andrews' origin story might be one of the most well-known in Hollywood history, so this is probably a tale you already recall.  For the unfamiliar, after being a sensation in both television (Cinderella was seen by over 100 million people when it was broadcast by CBS in 1957) and theater (both The Boy Friend and My Fair Lady were absolute smashes), Andrews turned her eyes to Hollywood.  Initially she assumed she'd be cast as Eliza Doolittle in the big-screen adaptation of My Fair Lady, but that didn't happen as Jack Warner wanted a bigger star (Audrey Hepburn) to lead the movie, so instead she made her debut in Mary Poppins, which won her the Best Actress Oscar (Hepburn wasn't even nominated).  There was no sophomore slump for Andrews-the next two years she made the highest-grossing film of both 1965 (The Sound of Music) and 1966 (Hawaii). So at the point Andrews teamed up with Hitchcock (who did not want her initially for the part-he favored Eva Marie Saint) she was basically Hollywood's box office insurance policy, not just having yet to make a flop, but she was basically the monetary guarantee that someone like Dwayne Johnson is today.  As a result, Hitchcock was required by Universal to put Andrews in his picture (coming full circle on the Eliza Doolittle situation), which brings us to Torn Curtain.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie takes place in the mid-1960's, where Dr. Michael Armstrong (Newman) is on a secret mission in Copenhagen where he receives covert instructions to contact π if he gets into trouble.  Armstrong is defecting to the Soviet Union, much to the shock of his fiancee Sarah (Andrews), who follows him to the Soviet Union & is then pressured to also defect, except she assumes this to be legitimate.  It turns out that Armstrong is trying to learn secret anti-missile secrets from the Soviets, and when he does he is found out, with the Soviets intending to kill both he & Sarah before they can flee back to the United States with this information.  π ends up being a group of people that use a decoy bus to get people out of the country, and with the help of this organization (and Lila Kedrova in a cameo as an exiled Polish countess), the two flee to America, their romance renewed & America stronger for another day.

The film itself, despite its relatively twisty plot, reads as pretty straightforward when you're watching it. Part of the problem is that it doesn't feel like it has a lot of Hitchcock's best flourishes.  It still looks great (beautiful stars, glamorous hotels...there's definitely a polish there), but it doesn't have the artistry that Hitchcock's films were known for.  I know we're cheating a bit by not featuring more of Hitchcock's greatest films (1954-64 is generally considered to be when he made his best pictures), as the confines of the rules of this series (I only watch "new to me" films) hurts that cause since I've seen virtually all of Hitchcock's films in that era, so we aren't going to focus on him in his glory, but as it's October (the year is winding down) we shouldn't forget that Hitchcock never really stopped making movies, even when the public started to lose interest.  Torn Curtain was not, as some describe it, a flop (it was a minor hit, though nowhere near the success of Psycho or The Birds), but it definitely represents a different era of creativity from Hitchcock.  I have not seen any film he made after this (we'll get to all of the rest of them in December), but I will admit this feels listless in the way some of the "director for hire" work we've been seeing Hitchcock made in Sunday Leftovers did, rather than peak creativity like he had just a few years earlier.

Part of the problem, I'm sorry to say, is the leads.  I love Paul Newman & Julie Andrews-both brilliant actors, I'd give them both Oscars at points in their careers-truly great stars.  But they don't work well together-there's not a lot of chemistry between Andrews' bright-and-bouncy screen aura & Newman's sex-driven, sensitive soul.  Andrews in general is not a great fit for Hitchcock.  I think the logic here must have been "Doris Day made it work, why can't Julie Andrews?" but that doesn't pan out-Andrews onscreen persona did eventually shift, but in the 1960's there was too much money to be had from not breaking it, and the character here doesn't really warrant it.  As a result, Andrews feels tonally out of place, and this is the rare dud for me from our Star of the Month.  Next week, though, we'll be getting into one of Andrews' most successful pictures, and a movie far more in her natural wheelhouse.