OK, I'm sure you can argue that Torn Curtain is too long and meanders somewhat in the story department, but only in the same good way as does Foreign Correspondent. Much-maligned Hitchcock has loads to offer and knocks most films into the shade. And whilst its stars Paul Newman and Julie Andrews aren't really right for the material, all the secondary casting is absolutely perfect. In fact one of those scenes that seem to inflate it involved the Countess (Lila Kedrova), and she's just brilliant.
Film often seems to reflect the genius of Hitch's thirties period, e.g. the entire coach sequence, in which they are being chased by the real coach but nevertheless have to stop and pick up a couple of elderly passengers; meanwhile they are threatened from within as much as outside, as one of their group doesn't want the couple to be there.
Has the most brilliant sequences such as museum (all footsteps), the battle of wits with the elderly professor (Ludwig Donath, also good), ballet sequence (where he adds tiny freeze frames into the ballerina shots, as she recognises him), finale on board ship, and particularly the musicless murder of Gromek (the equally good Wolfgang Kieling), which is extremely gripping and yet laced with the Master's usual black humour (you can see Carolyn Conwell looking around for the next thing she can try and kill him with). And Newman's accidental upstaging of the ballerina Tamara Toumanova is a recurrent joke.
It doesn't seem to have the usual team, though the Blu-Ray shows us sequences with Bernard Herrmann's score, and it really isn't right (not that John Addison's is particularly memorable). It was shot by John Warren (many episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour) and edited by Bud Hoffman, though clearly under Hitch's tutelage (note cuts in and before murder scene particularly). The production design - in all its chilly greys - was by P&P's Hein Heckroth. Gunter Strack is also very good as a professor who we don't quite know what to make of.
I can draw a straight line from this film to the Coen brothers.
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