Torn Curtain

Synopsis

Torn Curtain was Hitchcock's 50th production. This Cold War espionage story set in East Germany was actually filmed in Hollywood on Universal Studio's sets. Paul Newman and Julie Andrews star in this classic tale of international espionage set behind the Iron Curtain. Newman plays world-famous scientist Michael Armstrong, who goes to an international congress of physics in Copenhagen with his fiancée/assistant Sarah Sherman (Andrews). While there, she mistakenly picks up a message meant for him which implies he is defecting to East Germany.

"I got the idea from the disappearance of the two British diplomats Burgess and MacLean, who deserted their country and went to Russia. I said to myself, 'What did Mrs MacLean think of the whole thing?'" – Alfred Hitchcock in Hitchcock: The Definitive Study of Alfred Hitchcock (Francois Truffaut, 1967: 309)