``Torn Curtain'' Hitchcock's ambitious attempt at a spy thriller *Note! Contains spoilers.

A three-act play in which the perspectives change one after another.

From here on, I'd like to talk specifically about the contents of "Torn Curtain."

This film is roughly divided into three acts. The first act is told mainly from Sarah's point of view, up until her defection to East Germany. Why did her beloved Michael abandon his homeland and defect to the Communist side? Is he really a traitor? Her suspicious gaze towards her fiancé has a similar structure to " The Precipice " (41), which is told from the point of view of a wife who is plagued by suspicion that her beloved husband is trying to kill her.

Then, in the second act, the story is told from Michael's point of view. He is actually an American spy who has been entrusted with the mission of stealing the formula needed to develop the Gamma 5 nuclear weapon by Dr. Lint, an authority on atomic physics. The suspense of whether his true identity will be revealed is filled with the same tension as in " Notorious " (46), in which a female spy enters into a fake marriage with the mastermind of the Nazi remnants in order to find out information about them.

The third act is the escape drama of Michael and Sara until they escape East Berlin. Rather than depicting it from the perspective of a specific character, the suspense is built up in a straightforward manner like " The Saboteur " (42) and " North by Northwest ". Three different touches are packed into one film, "Torn Curtain". This film can be said to be a culmination of Hitchcock's previous films.

“Torn Curtain” (c)Photofest / Getty Images

There are many highlights in this film, such as the escape on a disguised bus and the escape from the opera house, but the highlight is undoubtedly the murder scene of Gromek. Discovered to be a Western spy, Michael jumps on Gromek, who is watching over him, and a woman from the secret service stabs him with a kitchen knife. She then beats him to death in the legs with a shovel, and finally drags Gromek into an oven with the gas open. The presence of a taxi driver outside creates a suspenseful situation in which it is impossible to make any noise, making it a very realistic and vivid murder scene.

"Even with this long murder scene, I first wanted to do something completely opposite to the well-worn patterns in previous movies. Usually, in any movie, a murder scene is done quickly.... I wanted to portray how difficult, how tough, and how time-consuming it is to kill a human being." (*)

This "spirit of never following a worn-out pattern" is the essence of Hitchcock. In " North by Northwest ," he stunned the audience with the absurd setting of "being attacked by an airplane on a vast plain in broad daylight" rather than the common method of "being attacked by an enemy at a crossroads at night," and the same spirit of challenge is alive in this film.

Sharp sandwich structure