Authors: Patrick McGilligan
But a fair share of the film’s flaws, Waterhouse reflected, should be blamed on Hitchcock. The master provocateur of
Psycho
and
The Birds
had begun making mistakes; he first turned old-fashioned, with
Marnie;
and now he was behaving cautiously, and worse. Hitchcock took out his resentment of the stars on the most vulnerable players; he fixated on irrelevant details; and the man who had always challenged audiences now seemed bent on pandering to the moron millions.
“We could not persuade him,” Waterhouse remembered, “to let us get to work on an immortally bad line uttered by Julie Andrews: ‘East Berlin? But—but—that’s behind the Iron Curtain!’ Mindful of geographically uncoordinated audiences in such centers of insularity as Dubuque, Mr. Hitchcock steadfastly refused to modify the line, not even to the extent of getting rid of the superfluous ‘but’ and its hesitant dash.”
“Additional dialogue by” was a dubious credit that had been abolished by the Writers Guild, so when Hitchcock submitted “Story by Brian Moore, Screenplay by Brian Moore, and Keith Waterhouse & Willis Hall” as the film’s official credits, the matter was automatically sent to arbitration.
Waterhouse reports that Hitchcock “campaigned valiantly” for his name and Hall’s to be included, adding, “I hope it does not seem ungrateful when I reveal that we were campaigning just as vigorously to have our names kept out of it.” Moore, “feeling that the script was not up to his standards and expectations,” according to Jean Moore, tried just as hard to keep his name off. “However,” said his wife, “our lawyer intervened again and strongly advised Brian not to remove his name.” Ironically, Hitchcock’s resistance to changes had limited the Englishmen’s input, and after studying the drafts the Guild struck their names.
In spite of the script’s defects, Hitchcock was still optimistic as the filming began; one might even say he was deluded. Sending a copy of the script to Truffaut for his opinion, he wrote, “In some respects it might have the feeling of
Notorious
, except that I have given it a little more movement than
Notorious
had. Anyway, read the script and then you can judge for yourself.”
When Paul Newman and Julie Andrews read the script, however, they saw no resemblance to
Notorious.
In fact, it seemed substandard—nothing like the story they had agreed to star in. Andrews, whose role had mysteriously shrunk during the successive drafts, secretly despised the script, while Newman admitted later he “never felt comfortable” with it. But the clock was running, and both trusted in Hitchcock.
Apart from Lila Kedrova, most of the ensemble were known only to European filmgoers. Gisela Fischer (as Dr. Koska, the defector’s pro-U.S. contact in East Germany) and Wolfgang Kieling (as Hermann Gromek, the “personal guide” who is actually a menacing undercover agent for the East German state) had both appeared in
Frau Cheneys Ende
, a 1961 German version of the chic English jewel-thief play
The End of Mrs. Cheyney.
Kieling’s countercasting as the film’s only true heavy—he was a frequent studio vocalist for hit Broadway shows rerecorded in German—was a joke only for diehard German fans.
Hansjoerg Felmy was cast as the chief of East German security, and Günter Strack as the East German scientist who abets the American scientist’s defection. Tamara Toumanova, whose role as a ballerina wittily bookends the film, had been the supreme Russian ballerina of the 1930s and 1940s in Paris and New York. Ludwig Donath, a veteran of German and U.S. films, played the East German professor who has formulated a
sought-after mathematical theory to counteract nuclear weaponry. This, his final role before his death, brought Donath back from a long absence due to the blacklist.
On October 18, photography began on Stage 18 at Universal. From the outset Hitchcock got along politely—too politely—with Julie Andrews, while Paul Newman vexed him with his persistent Method questions, and his equally vexing script suggestions (“apparently,” Hitchcock wrote Brian Moore earlier, passing along three pages of his ideas, this “comes from Paul Newman the author, and not Paul Newman the actor”).
“One of our duties,” recalled Keith Waterhouse, “was to keep Paul Newman out of our director’s nonexistent hair, spelling out the thinking behind any scene or piece of dialogue that troubled him, and if necessary inventing far-fetched explanations for the characters’ behavior. This we became quite good at.”
One thoroughly minor scene, where Newman had to furtively meet Andrews and take a package from her, agonized the star; no matter how much the writers reassured him, Newman insisted on discussing it with Hitchcock at some length during the camera rehearsal. The star hemmed and hawed, finally asking how he should be
relating
to Andrews in the scene.
“Well, Mr. Newman,” Hitchcock explained in his plummy accent. “I’ll tell you exactly what I have in mind here. Miss Andrews will come down the stairs with the package, d’you see, when you, if you’ll be so good, will glance just a little to the right of camera to take in her arrival; whereupon my audience will say, ‘Hulloh! What’s this fellow looking at?’ And then I’ll cut away, d’you see, and show them what you’re looking at.”
*
But there was an unmistakable pall over the project, symbolized neatly by Hitchcock’s gray-on-gray color scheme. Even the atmosphere on the set was “everywhere gray”—the color of indefiniteness, irresolution, and gloom. Regardless of his customary black or blue suits, the director himself now virtually embodied that color. “Hitchcock in action,” reported one journalist to the set, “is mostly Hitchcockian inaction.”
“We all knew we had a loser on our hands,” Newman recalled afterward.
The director “just lost heart during the shooting,” according to
Vertigo
writer Sam Taylor. “He just couldn’t get a chemistry going with them [Newman and Andrews], and he got very depressed and just went through the motions.”
In the end Hitchcock stared past the leads, but this time he ignored most of the supporting players, too. “Sometimes with actors it was a puzzling experience,” recalled matte artist Albert Whitlock, “his lack of communication.”
Instead, he took to yelling at the “rooks and pawns,” according to Waterhouse. “It was painful, one day, to see a wretched bit player being harangued by the distinguished director for not jumping off a bus in the proper manner. Hitchcock made him do retake after retake, cruelly tormenting him for being unable to comprehend a simple note of direction when he called himself an actor. The poor fellow was jumping off the bus in what he must have firmly believed, from his own observation, was the way that people do jump off buses; unfortunately, this did not coincide with the picture in Mr. Hitchcock’s mind. The director wanted the actor to emulate, to perfection, a photograph he had never seen.”
Hitchcock went through the motions for more than three months, including two weeks of unscheduled hiatus when Newman incurred a chin infection, before filming was finally completed in mid-February 1966. Through most of that time the director visited his personal physician at least twice weekly at 8
A.M.
before heading over to the set at Universal.
Bernard Herrmann was awaiting instructions in England, where he had moved in the midst of a fractious divorce. Now run by executives who started out in the music agency business, Universal insisted on a pop music score for
Torn Curtain
—preferably with a hit song performed by Julie Andrews—and Hitchcock didn’t necessarily disagree. He had long recognized the value of music in his films.
Even by the time of
The Birds
, Hitchcock felt that Herrmann’s music was becoming too predictable in its portentousness. Then Herrmann’s score for
Joy in the Morning
, a sudsy MGM film that followed
Marnie
, particularly “disappointed” him. “
NOT ONLY DID I FIND IT CONFORMING TO THE OLD PATTERN
,” Hitchcock bluntly wired Herrmann early in the filming of
Torn Curtain
, “
BUT EXTREMELY REMINISCENT OF THE MARNIE MUSIC IN FACT THE THEME WAS ALMOST THE SAME
.
“
UNFORTUNATELY FOR WE ARTISTS WE DO NOT HAVE THE FREEDOM THAT WE WOULD LIKE TO HAVE BECAUSE WE ARE CATERING TO AN AUDIENCE AND THAT IS WHY YOU GET YOUR MONEY AND I GET MINE
.”
Trying to explain the the new direction he wanted Herrmann to adopt, the director explained that “catering to an audience” meant catering to increasingly younger audiences, staying hip to the Nouvelle Vague, and likewise to contemporary trends in film music.
“THIS AUDIENCE,”
he wrote, “
IS VERY DIFFERENT FROM THE ONE TO WHICH WE USED TO CATER IT IS YOUNG VIGOROUS AND DEMANDING STOP IT IS THIS FACT THAT HAS BEEN RECOGNIZED BY ALMOST ALL OF THE EUROPEAN FILMMAKERS WHERE THEY HAVE SOUGHT TO INTRODUCE A BEAT AND A RHYTHM THAT IS MORE IN TUNE WITH THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE AFORESAID AUDIENCE STOP THIS IS WHY I AM ASKING YOU TO APPROACH THIS PROBLEM WITH A RECEPTIVE AND IF POSSIBLE ENTHUSIASTIC MIND STOP IF YOU CANNOT DO THIS
THEN I AM THE LOSER STOP I HAVE MADE UP MY MIND THAT THIS APPROACH TO THE MUSIC IS EXTREMELY ESSENTIAL
.”
Herrmann gave Hitchcock no cause for concern in his return telegram, which said, “
DELIGHTED COMPOSE BEAT SCORE FOR TORN CURTAIN ALWAYS PLEASED HAVE YOUR VIEWS
.”
For whatever reasons, then, Hermann followed his own muse and wrote a score of instrumental extremes, with heavy emphasis on the bass, brass, and woodwinds, and almost no apparent melody. It may have been vintage Herrmann, but it wasn’t the departure Hitchcock had asked for. Hitchcock wanted Herrmann to provide upbeat musical relief from a film that everybody—the director included—found flat and dull.
Both men were under great strain when Hitchcock kept an appointment with Herrmann in late March to listen to the first recording of the music. But the director didn’t get very far, absorbing only the Prelude before shutting the recording off. Where was the pop sound he wanted? he demanded furiously.
Herrmann was just as angry. “Look Hitch,” he said, “you can’t out-jump your own shadow. And you don’t make pop pictures. What do you want with me? I don’t write pop music.”
“I’m entitled to a great pop tune if I want one,” replied Hitchcock sullenly.
“Hitch, what’s the use of my doing more with you?” Herrmann said fatally. “I had a career before, and I will afterwards.”
Those were their last words. Whether Hitchcock actually fired Herrmann is unclear—accounts differ—but according to Herrmann’s own account, he
quit.
After which, British composer John Addison, who won an Oscar for the pastiche score of
Tom Jones
in 1963, was forced to play catch-up with a light score that was among the most forgettable Hitchcock ever used.
A few years later, Herrmann visited the director at Universal to pay his respects, and repair the damage. But Hitchcock refused even to come out of his office to greet his old comrade—refused ever to work again with the man who wrote the ultimate Hitchcockian music for
The Trouble with Harry, The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Wrong Man, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho
, and
Marnie.
“
IF YOU CANNOT DO THIS
,” Hitchcock had predicted, “
THEN I AM THE LOSER
.”
Before
Torn Curtain
’s midsummer opening Hitchcock conducted publicity on the East Coast, then met with François Truffaut in London for final editing of the interview book. Afterward he spent a week with Sidney Bernstein in Orbetello, Italy, returning to London in time to promote the film’s
release in England. In England and America, reviewers struggled to detect some merit in the fiftieth Hitchcock film. “What went wrong here, one suspects,” wrote Penelope Houston in
Sight and Sound
, “was something basic in the storyline.” “Awful,” “preposterous,” and “irritatingly slack,” Renata Adler concluded in the
New Yorker.
“Hitchcock is tired,” declared Richard Schickel in
Life
, “to the point where what once seemed highly personal style is now merely repetition of past triumphs.”
The best scene in the film—the only truly memorable one—dated back to the very first synopsis: Gromek’s death. The East German undercover agent has followed the defector to an isolated farm outside Berlin, where he is making surreptitious contact with an American agent. Confronted in the kitchen by Gromek and threatened with arrest, the scientist and a farm woman accomplice have no choice but to fight back. First they attempt to strangle Gromek, and stab him with a butcher knife; then they try to bludgeon him with a shovel. But the tough villain keeps springing back to life. Finally they shove Gromek headfirst into a oven, turning on the gas and holding him inside—until he asphyxiates, his fingers twitching spasmodically. The struggle—as shot by Hitchcock, characteristically, without any real dialogue or music—is not only brutal but uncomfortably comical. Although Brian Moore complained to Donald Spoto that the director “went further than I think he should have in that case,” it was the most Hitchcockian scene in
Torn Curtain
—and a last bitter allusion to the Holocaust. (“One couldn’t help but think that here we are back at Auschwitz again and the gas ovens,” Hitchcock told Richard Schickel.)
But in the end the only thing faintly
Notorious
about
Torn Curtain
was the Macguffin—the “antimissile missile” formula sought by Paul Newman. Hitchcock had anticipated the atomic bomb for his 1945 film, and Frances FitzGerald in her book
Way Out There in the Blue
makes a good case that
Torn Curtain
likewise anticipated war weaponry of the future. Ronald Reagan, an ex-client of Lew Wasserman’s who now occupied the California governor’s seat, watched the latest Hitchcock film and took note, according to FitzGerald. Years later, as president, Reagan was inspired by Hitchcock’s Macguffin to propose his still-controversial, still-unrealized “Star Wars” missile-defense shield.
Despite initial crowds,
Torn Curtain
did less well than
Marnie
at the box office, making it a second, and more expensive, knockdown for Hitchcock. Though accustomed to such disappointments in his long career, he no longer had the resilience of the boy wonder who went to the studio bristling with energy, ideas, and mischief, who worked all day and then stayed after dark to shoot necessary scenes, who bounded up three flights
of steps when he came home late and then hosted a party, or attended a first night, or went dancing at a nightclub.