this review was written on a cloudy summer day when my wife and daughter were at the playground and I was watching over my son who was sleeping and these days he only sleeps about 35 minutes at a time so I better get to it
I simply cannot shake Torn Curtain from my mind, a film that almost doesn’t even feel like a film but instead a peak behind the curtain (no pun intended, I swear) of a crucial resistance, a love letter to rebels who fight the ceaseless fight, a film by which all accounts the movie-loving community that worships and reveres a “great” Hitchcock film considers to be a “bad” Hitchcock film, for this film embraces an irreverent form of storytelling in which the main “stars,” who in this case are Paul Newman as Professor Michael Armstrong and Julie Andrews as Sarah Sherman, are not stars at all, but mere aperitifs, simple eye-catching ornaments that warm the palette for what is yet another quietly Neo-Baroque experience from late-period Alfred Hitchcock concerned with the everyman’s collective role in re-balancing a wayward society, and the real stars are the people that help Michael and Sarah escape the Soviet-controlled region with an anti-missile formula, the resistance itself, the people whose lives would be just as affected by Michael’s legendary ruse, if not more affected, more forever changed, indispensably stabilized, in fact, as they are the ones without whom the movie would not exist, who guide Michael and Sarah through treacherous terrain behind the Iron Curtain, on the other side of a sickening dividing line, a fucking wall of all idiotic, Neanderthalic things (which narcissist rulers to this day believe can solve an entire nation’s problems), where the American everyman, who appears to feel safe and secure inside his well-maintained borders yet secretly fears and in fact irrevocably understands that oppressive monarchs can ruin everything in a single power-hungry moment, has no business, gleans no true insight without submerging themselves in enemy territory, which Michael and Sarah bravely do, but not without the help of their disobedient comrades who refuse to simply sit and watch movies about the decrepit state of the world and instead get off their asses to actually help and fight and god forbid win, which explains why Hitchcock begins his film by mockingly framing Newman and Andrews, the two most bankable Hollywood stars at the time who were not right for this film’s script yet forced upon the director by a studio, as beautiful eye candy (there is literally an extreme close-up of Newman’s bafflingly blue eyes for seemingly no reason at all) as opposed to interesting characters with interesting stories, because Michael and Sarah really aren’t all that interesting, and in fact aren’t supposed to be interesting, at least compared to the people embroiled in political warfare, the calm and logical plotters like Mr. Jacobi who quietly battle cartoonish, bloodthirsty enemies like Hermann Gromek, or the unbearably sad yet hopeful believers like Countess Kuczynska (played by the indomitable Lila Kedrova, who gives the best performance by anyone ever in a Hitchcock movie, YOU CAN FIGHT ME ON THIS) who serve as the antithesis to entitled performers that blissfully enjoy the perks of tyranny like the ballerina, who just want to get out of this big dumb political mess that for whatever reason cyclically persists in such a cruel world, for these people are the “stars” of Torn Curtain, of the fight that does indeed persist and must persist as long as authoritarians seek absolute rule (fun fact: this was written the day after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that presidents’ have absolute immunity in their actions), and goddammit they deserve to have their stories told up on that silver screen by the world’s most popular director, and if the only way that can happen is to concede to Universal Studios that Paul Newman and Julie Andrews must be the “stars” then so be it, because (to Newman’s method-acting dismay) they won’t have much to do anyway, for they will merely be there to move the story forward to the next on-the-ground hero, and their blank stares and confused wandering will stealthily mimic everyone in the theater who is mad the movie doesn’t have the superficial thrills of your average Hitchcock vehicle, who turned up to see Hud Bannon and Maria von Trapp but were instead introduced to the countless people whose names you’ll never know in the first place and would instantly forget anyway, who chose to be part of the never-ending battle that only hasn’t ended because of such shared unsung rebellion, and of course that sort of accosting, challenging cinematic experience will drive people wild, will be boring to those who just want to enjoy a night out at the movies, but will remain invigorating and eye-opening and defiant to those hoping to be moved and challenged by such an alien approach to filmmaking.
