Men are at a disadvantage if they want to avoid typecasting. A woman can just bare her breasts like Anne Hathaway, do a pole dance like Natalie Portman, or spread her legs for the camera like Meg Ryan to escape fans who are too restrictive in their expectations.
Even Julie Andrews used sex to slip out of the nun's habit. There was Victor Victoria, but that was still a long way off. It's only when, close on Mary Poppins's heels, we see Andrews naked in bed with her boss that we realize this is an actress of true versatility. It's enough to make a feminist weep with pride.
Alfred Hitchcock's Torn Curtain opens with Paul Newman, an American rocket scientist, in bed with his assistant, Julie Andrews, at an international scientific convention. (The nudity is implied, of course. This was an age when implications were still enough to satisfy a girl's need to break type.) She tries to cajole him into setting a marriage date, and instead he defects to East Germany. Ouch. Of course Julie Andrews is much too plucky to let her man get away, much less betray his country and give the communists the upper hand in the nuclear chess match.
She follows him, complicating everything and earning a classic Paul Newman crusty. The communists are less than thrilled at this unanticipated baggage. Newman must slip away from his escort, who bears a visual resemblance to Boris from Rocky and Bullwinkle, in order to send her back to safety in the West. But will he return with her or is he truly a traitor?
Both leads do all right in this movie, although neither looks completely comfortable in their role (Newman as rocket scientist?). In contrast the secondary characters are great Hitchcockian fare, even if their parts are universally flat. There are also a few trademark moments for Hitchcock, like the long chase in a museum empty of people but full of footsteps, or the protracted macabre struggle to kill Gromek, or even the caustic German scientist who sits alone at the top of the classroom during Newman's interview.
There are some well-crafted moments of tension during the escape, including a crowded theater with a prima ballerina who holds a grudge against Newman, and a busload of conspirators, one of whom breaks under pressure. But I never bought into the characters enough to care, and the action moved too slowly to maintain any excitement.
Torn Curtain is much like Hitchcock's other Cold War spy thriller, Topaz, although it's much less interesting. At the same time it's more focused, and so may be less deeply flawed. Released in 1966 it was Hitchcock's fiftieth production, part of the long tail on the far side of a career that enjoyed multiple peaks.
World-famous scientist Michael Armstrong (Paul Newman) and his fiance/assistant, Sarah Sherman (Julie Andrews), travel to Copenhagen for a physics con...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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