TORN CURTAIN

Largely dismissed at the time of its release, "Torn Curtain" is, I feel, one of Alfred Hitchcock's most underrated films. Okay, it's no masterpiece but it is consistently entertaining and has several splendid Hitchcockian set-pieces, (including one particularly gruesome murder and another very suspenseful sequence set once again in a theatre). It's also very nicely played by Paul Newman as a would-be defector and Julie Andrews as his fiancee who unwittingly gets caught up in his schemes and there's an excellent supporting turn from Ludwig Donath as the German professor whose brain contains the secrets Newman is after as well as a terrific cameo from Madame Hortense herself, Lila Kedrova while the Cold War espionage plot harks back to some of Hitch's classic '40's spy pictures. The fine script is by Belfast-born novelist Brian Moore and Hitchcock makes excellent use of his European locations as well as some suitably artificial studio settings.