Perfectly edited montage sequence.The way Hitchcock uses his camera above Newman and the victim ,then he cuts to the woman with the kinfe from a lower angle to create contrast and suspence.
This scene is a great example Hitchcock's masterful skill,even in his inferior films.
Agreed. The build-up is intense, too -- the cutaway close-ups on the man's hand brushing against Newman's coat, the kettle of soup that suddenly crashes against the wall and the man. Brilliantly conceived and edited; impossible to forget. Too bad the rest of the movie wasn't up to its greatness, except for a few other scenes.
After seeing Torn Curtain I wasn't really impressed overall. However, I did love the murder sequence. Certainly the best part of the film.
shareI thought the first half was pretty good, but the murder scene was where it started going downhill for me. They are in a kitchen surrounded by various sharp and blunt objects and instead the woman decides they are best off dragging his body all the way over to the oven in order to gas him. That was ridiculous. If you are strong enough to pull him across the floor, you ought to be strong enough to hit him until unconscious with the spade you were carrying 1 minute ago. There were any number of better options for stopping the Stasi "Guide" than the method used.
shareThe murder scene might have been better with the Herrmann score on it.
shareI disagree, if there had been music in that scene, then it would not have been as suspensful. The only thing that the audience hears is the sound of their own discomfort without the music. Can you honestly tell me that you would not have wiggled in your seat or been as nervous if there had been music over that?
shareThe knife broke in his neck like it was made out of plastic.... that was weird...
shareLoved the delayed build up and that he didn't die straight away
http://us.imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=4995990
Coupla comments to the above:
1. Bernard Herrmann did write music for the murder scene. You can hear it over the murder scene on the "Torn Curtain" DVD. Interestingly enough, the composer who replaced Herrmann on "Torn Curtain," John Addison, ALSO wrote music for the murder scene, and you can hear SOME of it on the DVD documentary over the murder scene.
But Hitchcock wanted no music so as to enhance the realism of the scene, and he was probably right to do so. Gromek's murder thus lost the wild horror of, say "Psycho," but felt that much more brutal and real and stomach-churning. You just hear the sounds of death -- grunting, groaning -- and things like the metallic clang of the shovel against Gromek's shinbone. Ouch.
Hitchocck would do this again, two films later, with the even more realistic and horrible rape-strangling of a woman in "Frenzy." Again, no music. The sounds of the victim gasping and her killer's groaning (plus the "sound" of a necktie tightening against her throat) made that scene unbearable.
Hitchcock was in a weird mood in his later years about violence...
2. Herrmann's "Gromek murder music" is used in Scorcese's "Cape Fear" for the hurricane-houseboat climax.
3. When that knife breaks against Gromek's upper chest, it is sickeningly humorous. I think maybe Hitchcock was toying with his own "Psycho," where the butcher knife was invincibly able to puncture victims again and again.
Evidently, in real life, real killers who tried to kill people with butcher knives ala "Psycho" often had the knives break -- some crime reporter collected stories. So Hitchcock used that in this picture.
Hitchcock said the whole purpose of the scene was to show hard hard it is to actually kill someone. Music was not necessary.
shareBest Film Deaths Scenes [ filmsite] :
Torn Curtain (1966)
In Alfred Hitchcock's political/spy thriller, a lengthy murder sequence was set in a farmhouse kitchen, deliberately filmed without background music to emphasize how difficult it was to kill a human being (with one's bare hands without using a gun).
It involved the difficult murder of a Soviet agent - German "bodyguard" policeman Hermann Gromek (Wolfgang Keiling) by American physicist and secret double agent Prof. Michael Armstrong (Paul Newman), with the aid of a Farmer's Wife (Carolyn Conwell).
During the struggle, there were various different attempts to kill the seemingly invincible German:
a soup kettle thrown at him by the wife (it struck the wall next to him)
by strangulation
a butcher knife (thrust into his shoulder)
bashing his knees with a shovel
and finally by forcibly dragging his head into a cast-iron gas oven in order to asphyxiate him (with the fingers of his hands expressing his excruciating death)
The murder scene is the definite highlight, but other scenes also impressed me: the museum chase, just before Newman goes to the farm (I thought the use of fake backdrops gave the scene a strange atmosphere), and in particular the bit where the professor works out that Newman has tricked him into giving his secrets away.
"You get tired of your own obsessions, the betrayals, the voyeurism, the twisted sexuality"
Murder scene was fantastic. Simply fantastic.
I also love the scene on the bus as well. Great suspense.
I wish my hair was Emo so that it would cut itself
Actually the cue Herrman composed was very resemblance to the cape fear theme he composed for the original 1962 J. Lee Thompson film...later it was used on the Martin Scorsese's remake.
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If it just had the Herrmann score!
shareWhat a dumb scene. On another post, someone remarked that there were very, very few phones in East Germany, and a farmhouse out in the middle of nowhere would not have had one.
Further stupidity is the machismo of the security guy in the farmhouse. "OK, you've had your fun, enough." WTF? That is just moronic. And when he opens the window and doesn't scream for help immediately? What, is there some disconnect between his eyes seeing the open window and his vocal chords? How incredibly dumb.
Also silly was the fact that the taxi driver didn't think anything of this guy riding up on a motorcycle and entering the barn to meet with this American. Then the American leaves and not the guy on the motorcycle, and the taxi driver doesn't think anything of that?
How stupid was it that he draws the Pi in the mud and then just leaves it there. Omigod, that was dumb. And why did he need to have that meeting with the agent on the tractor? All he did was tell him the name of his contact. That could have been handled long before then when he was on the boat, in Copenhagen, in America, anytime before. And it would have made for a better picture if the viewer were kept in the dark longer before the big reveal.
Also, the taxicab driver would definitely have been in the Stasi anyway, especially when you consider that 1 in 6 were in it. Who would be in a better position to know what people were doing than a taxi driver? Dumb, dumb, dumb.
I think I'll start another post on this topic.
I asked the doctor to take your picture so I can look at you from inside as well.
Stupidest scene was when Newman yelled "Fire!" in the crowded theater. If there was no actual fire to be seen by anybody, the crowd would have simply shushed him and he would've stood there with egg on his face--not the big stampede which ensued. A great opportunity for suspense and cleverness bungled by the screenwriter.
shareStupidest scene was when Newman yelled "Fire!" in the crowded theater. If there was no actual fire to be seen by anybody, the crowd would have simply shushed him and he would've stood there with egg on his face--not the big stampede which ensued.
The analogy of shouting "fire" in a crowded theater actually sprang from a couple of tragedies when someone did indeed shout "fire" in a crowded place when there was no fire. The most famous incident of this type was the Italian Hall Disaster, when 73 men, women and children died in a stampede when someone falsely shouted "fire" at a crowded Christmas party.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Hall_disaster
That was not a mistake on the screenwriter's part. Humans do indeed engage in fatal stampedes when panicked, and shouting "fire" in an enclosed building is a grade-A way to panic people.
"He's already attracted to her. Time and monotony will do the rest."
Have you ever checked out what Hitchcock said about the so-called 'Plausibles"? I'm afraid as far as this scene goes, I'm with Hitchcock. Have watched this many times and have never once been bothered by anything like the things you mentioned even if some of them make sense, in fact I will go as far as saying that this is possibly one of the purest 'Hitchcockian' scenes in his whole long list of films. Should be shown to any director thinking of glamourising the killing of a human being - i.e. about 98% of all Hollywood directors.
I find this scene devastating every time. Perfection. Sorry.
Hey, no prob, we'll agree to disagree. Although I hear ya about not glamorizing the killing of a human being, especially by hand.
I asked the doctor to take your picture so I can look at you from inside as well.
The scene is the best thing in the movie. It's perfect.
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