I don't know what to say, ecarle, I just thought that they were poorly conceived and executed scenes. I'm not being cruel, I'm just callng 'em as I see 'em.
There can be little doubt but that Torn Curtain is not one of Hitchcock's best, but it's not as bad as everyone makes it out to be. But, it will never be mistaken as one of his best.
The chalkboard scene just did not do it for me. I thought it was the silliest thing I'd ever watched. Yes, I realize that Newman does get his "aha!" moment and ferrets away the great secret he came for in the first place. I just thought the whole duel of scientific wits was poorly done and that there should have been some other way to build the tension and suspense.
Gromek's scene was looking great - a real tense standoff - until after the pot smashes against the wall. The building of suspense over his imminent arrival and his impending discovery of Dr. Armstrong was handled very well, just as we'd expect from Hitchcock. But, once we get into that prolonged struggle to kill off Gromek, things go very, very wrong. I would expect that Hitchcock, as one who was a great technician and as one who mapped out these sequences so well in other films, would have done better with this one. The net effect was that it just was so unbelievable to me.
It took way too long. If Gromek's stabbing in his upper chest was enough to render him unconscious and motionless within a few seconds, where did he suddenly get all this strength to over-match Dr. Armstrong with that grip on the neck? I couldn't buy it. The knife went in, what? 1 1/2 to 2 inches, judging from how the knife blade broke off? I don't think that would have put him down that way in the first place. But, even if it did, I'm having trouble seeing how he was able to come back and maintain that death grip on Dr. Armstrong's neck and I fail to see why Dr. Armstrong could not extricate himself from that choke hold. And why didn't the farmer's wife do something? She whacked him once or twice on the knees with that shovel, why didn't she keep on hitting him?
Okay, so, then we get to the oven. Coal gas was the main source of gas for lighting, heating and cooking in much of Europe, replaced by natural gas some time in the 1960s. We can assume that this was also true for E. Germany. I am kind of surprised that a rustic and remote farmhouse in such a rural setting would have gas piped in. But, let's say that it is and that the gas is coal gas. Asphyxiation, via the domestic gas oven, was a widely-used means of committing suicide. Coal gas contains a high level of CO and the victim will die by sticking their head in the oven, but it takes a while, not the thirty seconds or so as shown in Torn Curtain with Gromek. What with the oven door being open, his head only barely in the oven and the kitchen being such a large (and probably draughty) space, it would take a lot longer, it would take hours. Most people who chose this method of suicide stopped up the cracks in doorways with towels and such in order to finish the job (see Sylvia Plath's suicide as one example).
He would need to breathe sufficient enough gas for the CO content in his blood to eventually reach lethal levels, which would take a considerable amount of time. But, not in an open room, with an open oven would it ever happen in the thirty seconds or so as depicted in Torn Curtain. I would hope that Hitchcock would have done better homework on this. Breathing pure automobile exhaust (pre-catalytic converter automobiles), without any fresh air, would take a good twenty minutes to kill a person. I'm thinking that he would have needed at least a few hours of exposure. He died so quickly, you'd have thought it was with Zyklon-B or something, which, of course, would also have killed Armstrong and the farmer's wife.
Yes, the ovens were something of an apt and interesting metaphor to employ, but the Nazis used the ovens as a means of destroying the already dead bodies, not as a means for execution, except for extreme cases or retribution, where someone was put in an oven alive. The Nazis employed Zyklon-B cyanide poisoning to kill their victims and then used the ovens to cremate the bodies. It's not that strong of an association, but it's hard not to make the association. But I wouldn't call it a great display of intelligence in filmmaking.
Death by domestic gas was widely used in society and is frequently shown in the movies (Knock On Any Door, The Ghost & Mrs. Muir, Dinner at Eight, Crimes of the Heart, all suicides, or attempted suicides, with one of them actually being an accidental death and not a suicide, come quickly to mind). It was a familiar and common means of killing oneself.
Anyway, I don't mean to pick on them, but I have to say that I can't agree with all those who think those scenes are great and that they are the sole redeeming bits from Torn Curtain.
Torn Curtain has a lot of problems and it's very interesting to consider its place in film history. Yes, there was a lack of chemistry between Newman and Andrews and the story was not "with it" in a way that would be exciting to audiences who had already seen James Bond. I thought that most of the moments of Newman and Andrews trying to escape unnoticed were full of tension and suspense. They were, for me, the good moments in this film. The two buses bit was also suspenseful at first, but ultimately it seemed a little hokey. Anyway, Torn Curtain is an interesting film to examine. Hitchcock had to strike out once in a while.
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ecarle
15 years ago
This is all OK with me...I'm not one to debate too much on scenes that folks don't like.
I think I'll slide the "chalkboard scene" off to the side and give up on that one(though I do love the care that Hitchcock gives to a close-up of Lindt's cigar flying through the air and hitting a corner wall.)
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I have an OP on this board called "Torn Curtain: Curtains for Alfred Hitchcock" where I get into my opinions on this obvious "Waterloo" of a film for Hitchcock -- though how unfair it was, only a few years after he had given us classics like "Vertigo," "North by Northwest" and "Psycho", for the critics and major movie stars to just declare him "over." It was a misfired film, is all. He didn't make many more after it; his spirit was broken, I think.
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Gromek: Nope, it would likely take a whole lot longer to smother someone in a gas oven, particularly THAT gas oven, if it worked at all.
I understand that it takes seven or eight minutes to totally strangle someone to death, too. Hitchcock put a strangulation in "Frenzy" that lasted, I dunno, about 45 seconds and people felt it was way, way way too "graphic and lingering." Nobody would have stood still for seven minutes of that poor woman gurgling to death.
I think where death is concerned, sometimes the movies have to fake it faster. (For the sake of argument: if Newman were pressing Gromek's face and mouth directly against the gas pipe, wouldn't THAT do it? We can't see.)
To me, the kettle of soup crashing into the wall is a great technical Hitchcock moment -- the jagged image editing and the clanging sound are the excitement here, not necessarily the "content." That kettle crashing is the signal, after the excruciating build-up: "We have to kill you, Gromek. And we are going to. Now."
Keep in mind that there is a taxi driver outside for the duration of the killing. They can't use the gun. They can't make a lot of noise.
And: Paul Newman's Armstrong is not trained in the martial arts. It is a grimly witty moment when Gromek -- not doing too well himself in Newman's grip -- says "Stop this nonsense -- I was trained by experts." Evidently not too well. But Newman has no training at all -- evidently neither does the "Farmer's wife" -- and they have to improvise killing this guy.
Novelist Brian Moore was the (weak) screenwriter on "Torn Curtain" but he brought to Hitchcock memories from his father, a surgeon, about how extremely hard it is, and how extremely long it takes, for a healthy human being to die under trauma. I think that the Gromek murder is "selling" this point strongly. The knife doesn't land in a fatal place(it may not have even severed a vein or artery;) and the knife blade breaks off. None of Newman's wrestling hold techniques are death-inducing. The farmer's wife does what she can with the knife and shovel, but never really gets a shot at doing something lethal, either, after the knife breaks(what's she gonna do? Punch Gromek in the face repeatedly? Try to raise the heavy shovel high enough for a blow WITHOUT hitting Newman in the face?)
It is all very slow, long, realistic, painful, amateur, bungled...just a great big shocking surprise of a Hitchcock scene to me, an entirely new take on murder that, frankly, the movies had been waiting 50 years to show (even the "Psycho" murders were QUICK, and the UN victim in "North By Northwest" died from a knife to the back in .000005 seconds.)
And...well, that's enough.
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