The torn curtain
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The torn curtain |
| Original title | Torn curtain |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English , German |
| Publishing year | 1966 |
| length | 122 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Alfred Hitchcock |
| script | Brian Moore |
| production | Alfred Hitchcock for Universal Studios |
| music | John Addison |
| camera | John F. Warren |
| cut | Bud Hoffman |
| occupation | |
| |
The torn curtain (original title: Torn Curtain) is a political thriller by Alfred Hitchcock from 1966 .
action
A group of scientists arrives in Copenhagen for a congress . They include the American professor Michael Armstrong, his assistant and fiancée Dr. Sarah Sherman and the GDR scientist Prof. Karl Manfred. Armstrong, who is working on a formula for a new missile defense system called GAMMA 5, surprises his fiancée with the news that he will be leaving Copenhagen for Stockholm immediately to find new donors for his project. This means that the planned wedding of the two will be postponed indefinitely. Armstrong suggests that Sarah pursue the Copenhagen Congress in his place. Sarah is horrified by the sudden change of heart and wants to travel back to New York immediately when she happens to find out in the hotel that Michael has not booked Stockholm, but East Berlin . Without further ado, she can be registered for this flight and is discovered by the horrified Armstrong in the plane.
In Schoenefeld , Armstrong was honored by Vice President Strauss and Minister of Science Dr. Tailors received. Meanwhile, Prof. Manfred arranges for the surprise guest Dr. Sherman takes care of the visa formalities before the couple is taken over by the Stasi employees Gerhard and Gromek at the airport . After a short stay in Berlin, a meeting with the famous Professor Lindt at the University of Leipzig is planned for the scientists . On this occasion, Prof. Armstrong hopes to get the missing part of the formula for GAMMA 5. In their hotel room, the argument between Armstrong and his fiancée really breaks out. While he describes his mission as strictly abstract in the sense of science, Sarah simply accuses him of treason.
A taxi driver drives Armstrong to a remote farm that is inhabited by agents from an escape organization called " Pi ". He receives instructions from the farmer and the name of the contact person “Dr. Kosta ”for his planned escape from Leipzig to West Berlin as soon as he has stolen the missing part of his formula from Professor Lindt. Agent Gromek has, however, taken up the trail of his protégé and smells the "roast of the conspiracy". A fight breaks out between Armstrong and Gromek. With the help of the farmer's wife, Armstrong manages to kill Gromek. The farmer's wife later removes Gromek's body and his motorcycle.
Back in Berlin, the couple is invited to an interview with Mr. Gerhard, in which Sarah assures that she will work with her fiancé. When the Stasi notices Gromek's absence, an investigation is started. The next day the taxi driver reports to Mr. Gerhard what he saw on the farm. Meanwhile, the Americans go to Leipzig with Prof. Manfred, where they are received by a curious university body. They are introduced to Comrade Otto Haupt, who will replace the missing Gromek, as their new supervisor. During a tour of the university, Armstrong “falls” down a flight of stairs and is then met by Dr. Koska, who introduces herself as a member of the escape helpers group "Pi". Before the university board comes to the first questioning of Armstrong, Mr. Haupt interrupts the session and whispers to his compatriots that Gromek was last seen alive on a farm that Professor Armstrong had visited a few days ago. The latter admits visiting distant relatives, but denies Gromek's presence. Armstrong's questioning is then canceled.
After Michael revealed his actual espionage plans in favor of his country to Sarah, the couple arrives in the evening at a private party hosted by Professor Lindt. Armstrong can establish closer contact with Lindt there. At a meeting the next morning in Lindt's study at the university, Armstrong stunned his GDR colleague with the false claim that GAMMA 5 had already been built in the USA. Lindt claims that Armstrong's formula is guaranteed to blow up the construction and tries to correct it. In the meantime, the People's Police have discovered Gromek's body on the farm's property, which corroborates the suspicion against Armstrong. While the two scientists are still busily discussing the formula, all students at the university are asked over loudspeakers to look for the two Americans. Armstrong has already learned the missing part of the formula from Prof. Lindt. With the help of Dr. Koska and Sarah take a bike across Leipzig to the “Pi” escape bus, which is manned by around 20 fictional travelers and is supposed to bring the couple safely back to Berlin.
The bus is first stopped and examined by the People's Police, and shortly afterwards it is stopped again by Russian military deserters to take cash from the occupants. Both events can be defused with the active help of the organisation's "tour guide", Mr. Jakobi, as well as Heinrich, the bus driver, and Armstrong himself. The police gave the bus two motorcycle patrols for escort. But the regular bus is getting closer and closer to the getaway vehicle. A fellow traveler, Miss Mann, has become very nervous because of the situation and, when she cannot calm down and really wants to get out, is abandoned on the road. The escape bus finally reaches Berlin, and the bus stops directly behind it. The police escort becomes suspicious, and when all the travelers from "Pi" run away, they shoot a few submachine gun salvos after the fugitives. Armstrong and Sarah escape unharmed and start looking for their next escape agent, Mr. Albert.
The couple is approached by the Polish Countess Kuchinska, who is looking for guarantors to enter the USA. After Sarah has written down her address, they go to Mr. Albert, from whom they get the business card of a travel agency. A suspicious porter has now called the police, but they are stopped by Countess Kuchinska. In front of the travel agency, the couple is intercepted by the agent disguised as a farmer, whom Armstrong had already met when they first met. The Americans are now supposed to attend a ballet performance, at the end of which the stage manager hides them in equipment baskets and takes them to neutral Sweden. During the performance, the ballerina recognizes the scientists in the audience and lets the Stasi arrive. When their boss Gerhard and the People's Police roam the aisles of the theater looking for something, Armstrong takes a stopgap solution and shouts "Fire!", Whereupon all visitors panic and rush to the exits. He and Sarah, however, are brought to safety from the panicked crowd behind a fire door and hidden in two costume baskets. The next morning, the ensemble and luggage are on board a ship on the Baltic Sea in the direction of Sweden. Again it is the Czech ballerina who suspects that something is wrong with the equipment baskets. While unloading, she causes a ship's officer to shoot certain baskets, but they are the wrong ones. The couple has now jumped into the water on the other railing and reached neutral Swedish soil by swimming.
When a Swedish reporter searches the arrival area of the port for the two Americans, they are already wrapped in dry blankets in front of a warming stove and enjoying their regained freedom.
background
After his last work Marnie (1964) had disappointed financially, Hitchcock found himself under pressure to find a better and more gripping story for his 50th film. Universal also got more involved. Hitchcock actually wanted to revive the ghost story Mary Rose by James Barrie from a script by Jay Presson Allen . He had already considered this project before Marnie . However, Universal successfully urged him to drop the venture. Due to the success of the James Bond franchise and the spy antagonism in general, he was instead looking for a writer to write the screenplay for a pessimistic, realistic spy thriller to demystify the James Bond idea. The Irish writer Brian Moore , who had moved to California especially for this, finally provided the script for The Torn Curtain , which was edited until its final version by other (not named) authors who fine-tuned the dialogues and a little humor in some places added. After its premiere in 1966, the film was criticized as old-fashioned, especially with regard to its production technology. Even if Hitchcock's anniversary work did not become a favorite of the film critics, the film could at least convince at the box office.
production
Filming locations, production design and production errors
At Hitchcock's express request, Hein Heckroth was hired as production designer , who had received the Oscar in 1948 for his equipment for the ballet film The Red Shoes , because one of the highlights of the film takes place during a theater performance. In addition, Heckroth built parts of Copenhagen , East Berlin and Leipzig on the studio premises on a tight budget , because the Universal bosses - unlike Hitchcock - were not prepared to spend on creative elements. Famous actors were more important to them, so a considerable part of the budget was used for the two stars. Cinematographer Leonard South later recalled: “Hitch wanted authenticity and wanted to shoot the film in West Germany. Instead, Universal had a German crew record rear wall projections. ”The original scenes of the film were shot exclusively with studio buildings and rear projections on the Universal site and in the Californian area. Hitchcock only used recordings from Europe for a few inserts , intercuts and back projections. From Berlin you can essentially see a view of West Berlin's Fehrbelliner Platz with the service buildings of today's Senate Department for Urban Development and the Berlin State Administration Office in Wilmersdorf. One of the service buildings is said to be the "Hotel Berlin" in East Berlin. There are also some newer automobiles on display here (including BMW, Ford and Mercedes-Benz) that were certainly not found in East Berlin around 1966. Another shot filmed over the Wall from West Berlin ( Springer high-rise ) shows the Gendarmenmarkt , which at the time was still largely in ruins, and the fallow land in Berlin's Friedrichstadt that was cleared of war rubble. The backdrop of ruins with a pile of bricks visible from the Stasi office is very unlikely; even in East Berlin, twenty years after the end of the war, these had long been eliminated. The brown uniforms and peaked caps of the people's police officers in the post office scene also have nothing in common with the blue-gray GDR originals. The outdoor shots in front of Leipzig University were made in the studio. During the bus trip, exterior shots from the Hildesheim region can be seen. The bus drives past the “Heidekrug” restaurant near Diekholzen and, in other scenes, over the “Red Mountain” to Sibbesse . In the last shot, you can see the entrance to Sibbesse, as well as individual buildings and the level crossing that existed at the time. The first TV broadcasts were in a version specially formatted for American television (4: 3). In the "Leipziger Hügelszene" (pronunciation between Newman and Andrews) at the top of the picture one could clearly see the boundaries of the cloud backdrop and part of the headlights.
The film is now shown in its original widescreen format, which eliminates the faulty part of this scene. Another scene from East Berlin takes place on Museum Island when Paul Newman enters the Alte Nationalgalerie via the colonnaded courtyard . The building and the pillars are recorded using the matte method . When Newman leaves the museum through a back or side exit, he finds himself immediately on a busy street that is lined with a wall. However, he could only get out of the actual conditions on site in the back courtyard of the Pergamon Museum , between the post office in the east wing and the workshops. The area there is surrounded by the viaduct of the Berlin Stadtbahn (S-Bahn) and the Spree, there is no public road running along it. The vehicle used as a taxi to take Armstrong to the farmhouse belongs to the BMW Neue Klasse series and was not available in the GDR.
main actor
It is also legendary that Hitchcock was anything but enthusiastic when the studio prescribed the two leading actors Newman and Andrews, whose stars were just skyrocketing in Hollywood. Paul Newman had already successfully countered espionage in The Prize (1963), while Julie Andrews had only just enjoyed fresh fame as Mary Poppins (1965). Newman was a method actor who had to be “motivated” by the director for almost every scene and was happy to discuss its interpretation.
Further line-up
The cast consisted of Americans (Paul Newman, Mort Mills), English (Julie Andrews, Arthur Gould-Porter), West German actors (Hansjörg Felmy, Günter Strack, Wolfgang Kieling, Gisela Fischer), German-speaking (Ludwig / Louis Donath, Dr. Harold Dyrenforth, Norbert Schiller, Heinrich-Hermann "Rico" Cattani) and Eastern European emigrants (Lila Kedrova, Tamara Toumanova). Norbert Grupe junior, the German boxing light heavyweight also known as Prince Wilhelm von Homburg, played an extra role in the famous bus scene.
Scenes with Gromek
An often discussed scene is the murder of the Stasi man Gromek in the farmhouse of the escape organization "Pi". According to his own statements, Hitchcock wanted to show that killing a person is not as easy as it is often portrayed in films. For Armstrong and the farmer's wife, there is also the need to silently kill Gromek because a taxi driver is standing in front of the house as a possible witness. The farmer's wife interferes in the men's hand-to-hand combat and stabs Gromek in the shoulder with a large kitchen knife, breaking the blade. Armstrong and Gromek choke each other. The peasant woman hits Gromek's legs with a spade, whereupon the men fall to the ground. In this situation Armstrong and the farmer's wife manage to force Gromek's head into the gas-operated oven. Gromek eventually dies from the gas.
Hitchcock was particularly satisfied with the acting performance of Wolfgang Kieling as Gromek and also shot the “factory scene” with him, in which Armstrong and Sherman completed a factory tour after Gromek's death and demonstrated the achievements of the “workers 'and peasants' state”. A worker (also portrayed by Wolfgang Kieling) speaks to Armstrong, tells about his brother and shows photos of his family with three children. Armstrong becomes aware that he killed a family man. - This scene was not used in the final version, as the 128-minute film was already longer than a normal full-length movie. It was also based on Hitchcock's aversion to Newman's acting. Gromek's brother (Kieling) cuts a blood sausage and Michael (Newman) is visibly uncomfortable because the movement of the knife is reminiscent of exactly that from the murder scene. Sarah (Andrews) steps in and discusses other things. Hitchcock had wanted a neutral look from Newman, but Newman could only play with the "Method" emotionally and turn away. Hitchcock gave the only copy of these scenes to François Truffaut, and Truffaut gave them to Henri Langlois for the Cinémathèque archives. This unused footage seems irretrievably lost. In the bonus program of the DVD ("Torn Curtain Rising"), some still photos and parts of the script for this scene are reproduced.
music
As with the Hitchcock films of the previous ten years, Bernard Herrmann was to compose the film music. Universal insisted that Hitchcock make the film less gloomy and had indicated that the time for symphonic film music was believed to be over. Instead, relaxed light music, also suitable for selling records, was imagined. When Herrmann presented the finished film music to Hitchcock after the shooting was over, there was a scandal with Herrmann, who, like Hitchcock, could be a stalwart, quarrelsome perfectionist. Hitchcock quarreled and their friendship ended. The contract was now given to John Addison. Herrmann's prevented soundtrack for this film is now available on CD, and it is also included as an extra on some DVD releases.
The ballet performed in the theater scene is Tchaikovsky's Francesca da Rimini .
German dubbed version
The German synchronous arrangement was created in 1966 in the studio of Berliner Synchron Wenzel Lüdecke in Berlin . The dialogue book came from Fritz A. Koeniger , and Dietmar Behnke directed the dubbing .
| role | actor | Voice actor |
|---|---|---|
| Prof. Michael Armstrong | Paul Newman | Claus Biederstaedt |
| Dr. Sarah Louise Sherman | Julie Andrews | Margot Leonard |
| Countess Kuchinska | Purple Kedrova | Tina Eilers |
| Heinrich Gerhard | Hansjörg Felmy | Hansjörg Felmy |
| Hermann Gromek | Wolfgang Kieling | Wolfgang Kieling |
| Karl Manfred | Günter Strack | Günter Strack |
| Freddy | Arthur Gould-Porter | Kurt Mühlhardt |
| Mr. Jakobi | David Opatoshu | Hugo Schrader |
| Comrade Haupt | Harold Dyrenforth | Jochen Schröder |
| Hotel employee | Erik Holland | Jürgen Thormann |
| Farmer | Mort Mills | Hans W. Hamacher |
| Peasant woman | Carolyn Conwell | Ursula Heyer |
| Miss man | Gloria Govin | Marianne Penzel |
| Man on the bus | Norbert Grupe | - |
Compared to the original English version, the German version is a few minutes shorter. The reason is that German was spoken in some passages in the English version and these were then translated into English. Since no translation was necessary for the German version, it was removed there. The German VHS / DVD has also been shortened in two places in the restaurant scene that were still present in the original German theatrical version.
The German Blu-ray of the film contains the scenes with the translation.
The first broadcast on German television was on August 14, 1971 at 10:05 p.m. on ARD.
On June 17, 2013, the TV broadcaster Arte ran a slightly different version compared to the Blu-ray, in which a different text is spoken instead in the scenes with the superfluous translation. In addition, these scenes have been re-synchronized.
criticism
"The master of all masters now and then cooks with water."
"Turbulent espionage adventure, superficial and naive in the drawing of the Central German milieu, staged with no tension."
"Exciting espionage story [...] As always, Hitchcock dissolves the real thing into suspense. So politically naive and implausible, but cinematically brilliant. Rating: [...] very good "
“Quickly staged suspense film [...]. Murder, portrayed too broadly and bloodyly, disturbs the enjoyment of the director's ideas a little. Hitchcock friends over sixteen will get their money's worth for two hours. "
Cameo
Hitchcock is sitting in a hotel lobby with his back to the camera and has a toddler on his knee. The soundtrack turns into Charles Gounod's funeral march for a marionette in D minor (1872/79), which was used as the main theme for the Alfred Hitchcock Presents series (1955).
literature
- Robert A. Harris, Michael S. Lasky, eds. Joe Hembus : Alfred Hitchcock and his films. (OT: The Films of Alfred Hitchcock) . Citadel film book from Goldmann, Munich 1976, ISBN 3-442-10201-4 .
Web links
- Torn Curtain in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Review by U. Behrens, filmzentrale
- Conversation between Alfred Hitchcock and François Truffaut about the film
Individual evidence
- ↑ Release certificate for The Torn Curtain . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , December 2008 (PDF; test number: 36 080 DVD).
- ↑ Stephen Rebello: Hitchcock and the story of Psycho , Wilhelm Heyne Verlag , Complete German first edition, 02/2013, page 332 f.
- ↑ Stephen Rebello: Hitchcock and the story of Psycho , Wilhelm Heyne Verlag , Complete German first edition, 02/2013, page 333
- ↑ Brett Farmer: The Case of the Missing Scene ( English ) paralleljulieverse.tumblr.com. Retrieved February 25, 2020.
- ↑ Stephen Rebello: Hitchcock and the story of Psycho , Wilhelm Heyne Verlag , Complete German first edition, 02/2013, page 254
- ↑ Thomas Bräutigam : Lexicon of film and television synchronization. More than 2000 films and series with their German voice actors etc. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89602-289-X , p. 407 / The torn curtain in the German dubbing index ; Retrieved December 16, 2007
- ^ Adolf Heinzlmeier and Berndt Schulz in: Lexicon Films on TV (expanded new edition). Rasch and Röhring, Hamburg 1990, ISBN 3-89136-392-3 , p. 952
- ↑ Evangelischer Presseverband München, Review No. 387/1966