Torn Curtain

Alfred Hitchcock
1966

This late Hitchcock picture dealing with Cold War espionage is practically handed it's element of suspense as Julie Andrews and Paul Newman are outed as spies in totalitarian East Germany. Despite the difference in time, no other Hitch film comes to mind that so starkly references the paranoia and persecution of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union under Stalin. Paul Newman proves a decent hero, but Julie Andrews comes up short as the ideal Hitchcock heroine - too plain-Jane in an underwritten role suited for a shallow blonde beauty. The singular highlight is the drawn-out murder of motorcycle thug Gromek who has the misfortune of meddling too closely in the couple's affairs. With the help of a stern underground house-frau the blue-eyed King of salad-dressing bludgeons, stabs, and eventually smothers this villain in a delightfully macabre and hackle-rasing battle of wills. After that, escape becomes the name of the game as the body is found and the dragnet tightens. "Torn Curtain" proves more spiritually and politically uplifting than most of Hitchcock's somewhat misanthropic ouvre as the resistance network of spies/citizens has the noble and hell-bent streak of undermining the government's iron fist at any cost.