Torn Curtain (Alfred Hitchcock, 1966)

Julie Andrews and Paul Newman in Torn Curtain

Michael Armstrong: Paul Newman
Sarah Sherman: Julie Andrews
Countess Kuchinska: Lila Kedrova
Heinrich Gerhard: Hansjörg Felmy
Ballerina: Tamara Toumanova
Gustav Lindt: Ludwig Donath
Hermann Gromek: Wolfgang Kieling
Jacobi: David Opatoshu
Dr. Koska: Gisela Fisher
Farmer: Mort Mills
Farmer's Wife: Carolyn Conwell

Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Screenplay: Brian Moore
Cinematography: John F. Warren
Production design: Hein Heckroth

I saw Torn Curtain in the year of its initial release and was never tempted to watch it again until last night. I had forgotten almost everything about it except its general dullness and the one great scene when Armstrong and the farmer's wife take an extraordinary time (for a movie at least) to kill Gromek. It's an exceptionally well-directed scene, harrowing in its unexpected realism in the midst of a film that's anything but realistic. I particularly like the way the struggle leaves Armstrong exhausted when it's over, a refreshing change from the usual movie action in which the protagonist picks himself up and dusts himself off after a fight as if it was no big deal. There is one other thing that struck me when I first saw Torn Curtain: the way Michael and Sarah supposedly blend in with the crowds in East Germany. I had lived in Germany for almost a year several years earlier, and I know how easy it is to spot American haircuts and clothes, like the kind Paul Newman and Julie Andrews have in the movie, so their going unnoticed on a bus full of Germans struck me as silly movie fakery. But almost everything about Torn Curtain feels fake. Andrews and Newman are miscast, apparently having been foisted on Hitchcock by the studio, Universal. Granted, Andrews's role is a particularly thankless one, the stand-by-your-man helpmeet, but it's particularly unfortunate in the context of a film by a director who had traditionally given women strong leading roles. And despite an opening scene that puts the two of them in bed, there is no sexual chemistry between Andrews and Newman. (Was there ever sexual chemistry between Andrews and a leading man? Is that a consequence of having been introduced to movie audiences as a nanny and a novice in a convent?) The one interesting performance in the movie is Lila Kedrova's Polish countess, trying to get Michael and Sarah to sponsor her immigration to the United States, but it goes on much too long, as if Hitchcock knew what a drag the rest of the film was and wanted to showcase this florid eccentric. This was the first film Hitchcock made without the team of cinematographer Robert Burks, composer Bernard Herrmann, and film editor George Tomasini, who had seen him through most of the glories of his 1950s and early '60s classics.

The Red Shoes (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1948)

Robert Helpmann and Moira Shearer in The Red Shoes

Boris Lermontov: Anton Walbrook
Vicky Page: Moira Shearer
Julian Craster: Marius Goring
Boleslawsky: Robert Helpmann
Ljubov: Léonide Massine
Boronskaja: Ludmilla Tchérina
Livy: Esmond Knight
Ratov: Albert Bassermann
Prof. Palmer: Austin Trevor
Lady Neston: Irene Browne

Director: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
Screenplay: Emeric Pressburger, Keith Winter, Michael Powell
Based on a story by Hans Christian Andersen
Cinematography: Jack Cardiff
Production design: Hein Heckroth
Film editing: Reginald Mills
Music: Brian Easdale
Costume design: Hein Heckroth

In its digital restoration, The Red Shoes almost certainly looks better than it ever did even in the most optimal theatrical showing, its colors brighter and sharper, its darks deeper and more detailed. But is that necessarily a good thing? I'm not like one of those audiophiles who insist that old vinyl LPs sound better than CDs or any digital audio process -- I like being able to hear things without surface pops and skips. But I do think that in the case of a film like The Red Shoes, where suspension of disbelief is essential, something has been lost. The great red snood of Moira Shearer's hair is revealed to be a thing of individual strands that might have benefited from a quick brushing before her closeups. The special-effects moments, like Vicky's leap into the red shoes or Boleslawsky's transformation into the newspaper man, are more glaringly just rudimentary jump cuts. There's a loss of glamour and magic that hasn't been compensated for, even though we can now see Jack Cardiff's photography of Hein Heckroth's designs with greater clarity. I will also admit that I have never been in the front ranks of the fans of The Red Shoes. While I admire the storytelling ability of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, I have to question the moral of the story, which seems to be that a woman can't have both a great career and a successful private life, or in a larger sense, that art is impossible without a loss of self. Granted, the story comes from the realm of fairytale, which is never without an element of cruelty, but is Vicky's suicide a necessary follow-through, or just a submission on the part of the screenwriters to the demands of some kind of closure, given that they've never made the character more than a stereotype: the woman torn between the demands of two men? Ravishing to the eye, The Red Shoes doesn't satisfy the mind or the heart.