The Opening Bed Scene in 'Torn Curtain'

A critic by the name of Stanley Kauffman, who hated late-era Hitchcock movies, wrote this about “North by Northwest” when it came out in 1959:

“…standard by now is a huge two-shot scene, long protracted, in which the hero and heroine nibble each others ears and neck and converse in suggestive dialogue. It has the same relation to sex that Hitchcock’s recent pictures have to suspense.” I can't state his "Psycho" review verbatim, but Kauffman wrote something like "In this one, Hitchcock puts his usual face-nibbling close-up love scene right at the beginning of the picture."

Well. Kauffman hated “Vertigo”, “North by Northwest” and “Psycho,” but soon found himself swamped by Hitchcock’s growing reputation. (“Stanley Kauffman has lost,” Francois Truffaut wrote in an article.)

Still, Kauffman was onto something about those kissing scenes. Hitchcock was a director who had a way with suspense AND with romance; one reason his movies made so much money is that they were often great date movies. And maybe all that nibbling “had no relation to sex” , but sex couldn’t be shown on the screen then, and those Hitchcock kisses COULD be sexy. After all, he hired sexy people to do the kissing.

Kissing could also be “clever” in Hitchocck. He designed his kissing set-pieces just like his suspense set-pieces. “Notorious” has the early “longest kiss in screen history” (and a pretty long one near the end as Grant rescues Bergman.) “Rear Window” and “To Catch a Thief” have what Hitchcock calls “surprise kisses” , as Grace Kelly surprises sleeping Jimmy in his chair and suave Cary in the hotel doorway. The camera circles Stewart and Novak kissing in “Vertigo” (how’d that stable get into Novak’s hotel room?) and Grant and Saint physically circle the train cabin in “North by Northwest.”

Hitch really stepped on the gas with the opening scene in “Psycho.” Its perhaps the most directly erotic of Hitchcock kissing scenes: John Gavin is shirtless and bosomy Janet Leigh’s bra shows her midriff and as they roll about on a cheap hotel room bed(in 1960!) there are times when they look naked. There’s a definite sexual charge to John and Janet going at it, and it was funny: skinny Anne Heche and a bottomless Viggo Mortensen in the R-rated “Psycho” remake of 1998 didn’t come close to the Gavin/Leigh pairing.

“The Birds” didn’t have much time for kissing (a Tippi Hedren-Rod Taylor kissing scene was cut for time); but “Marnie” had that erotic moment when Sean Connery’s cruel lips closed down on Tippi’s mouth during the rainstorm.

Which brings us to “Torn Curtain.”

“Torn Curtain” opens with Hitchcockian “visual storytelling.” A ship on the inland seas of Norway. The heat is off. Everybody is having lunch in a dining room wearing heavy overcoats, hats, shivering in the freezing cold. Two chairs are empty. Cut to: a lumpy bed piled high with blankets and coats. Two name tags: Dr. Sarah Sherman. Professor Michael Armstrong.

And boom: there are our two Major Stars: Paul Newman and Julie Andrews. In bed together, nibbling away. I’ll bet Stanley Kauffman was POed.

Hitchcock’s “clever” concept here is this: because it is so cold, Newman and Andrews have their blankets up to their necks. So whatever is going on UNDER those blankets is open to our imagination. (Hitchcock’s promoted this well in an interview: “The censors were worried that there were relations going on under those blankets.”) Note: in addition to blankets atop the couple, we see Newman’s checkered overcoat on them, which will become his “uniform” in “Torn Curtain”, much like Roger Thornhill’s silver suit and Melanie Daniels’ green one.

Opening the movie as it does, the love scene is most meant to emulate “Psycho,” I think. Newman’s first line (“What happened to lunch?”) is a near-match for John Gavin’s (“You never did eat your lunch.”)

Their dialogue sure IS suggestive. Andrews says, “I thought this was supposed to be a congress of scientists.” Newman replies “What is your position on the nuclear issue?” as THEY shift position.

This opening scene is very reminiscent of “Old Hitchcock,” but two aspects of “new Hitchcock” are immediately made known. (1) Hitchcock Composer Bernard Herrmann is gone. John Addison puts a rather saccharine love theme over this nibbling-in-bed that rather defuses its sexuality. (2) Hitchcock Cinematographer Robert Burks (everything from "Strangers" to "Marnie" minus "Psycho") is gone. “Hip Hitchcock” here debuts a new cinematographer (John F. Warren) and a new photographic style: gauzy, blurry, “naturally lit.” Neither the music nor the visuals are comforting, here.

For all of the suggestiveness of the Newman/Andrews coupling here, I think it misses the heat of the Gavin/Leigh bout by quite a bit.

For one thing, Newman and Andrews are such big stars, that this seems more like a corporate merger than a love scene. Gavin and Leigh seemed like “you or me,” just sexier. This is Hud and Mary Poppins; the Hustler and Maria.

Meanwhile, with Paul and Julie, the blankets are up to their necks, so they aren’t going to “co-mingle flesh” as John and Janet did. Newman will get out of bed and show off his torso, but Andrews stays “undercover” for the whole scene.

Newman is being his usual wiseacre self here – indeed, this is the only time in the movie he really gets to be “Paul Newman, wiseass” – and it doesn’t quite help the sex. He jokes about being “Wrong Way Armstrong,” going from Washington to academics, rather than the other way around.

And Andrews is…well, let’s just say, surprisingly wrong for the scene. She was a pretty woman, and audiences may have THOUGHT they wanted to see Mary Poppins get it on (after all, Mary Poppins was a “tough love” stern British lady), but…it doesn’t work.

Are Newman and Andrews supposed to be naked under the blankets? Hard to say. Newman gets up to answer a door knock, putting on that overcoat over his bare-chested torso. I thought I saw a glimpse of his boxer shorts as he reentered the bed with Andrews.

In any event, when “Torn Curtain” debuted on US network TV on NBC in 1970, the TV censors took this ENTIRE scene out. An unmarried couple in bed under blankets, who might be naked and coupling while saying things like “congress of scientists” and “position”? Verboten on TV back then.

One nifty thing: as soon as Newman sees that telegram, he turns grim (“This isn’t for me, you’ve made a mistake”), and “Torn Curtain” shifts into a seriousness it will never lose. The movie will never be this "sexy and fun" again. To that extent, this opening love scene is meant to suggest an “Eden” from which the plunge into hell will begin.

All things considered, the opening love scene in “Torn Curtain” is pretty important. It is clever in the Hitchcock manner, it is sexy in the Hitchcock manner. Old motifs are used, but new ones are introduced (Addison’s syrupy love music, Warren’s blurry photography.) I certainly think this is an interesting scene. But it is not a classic.

Sort of like “Torn Curtain.”