Apparently if it could go wrong for Hitchcock it did go wrong, the actors couldn't work up any chemistry, the production was almost entirely shot on sound stages with phony sets. Hitchcock was unsatisfied with Bernard Herrmann's score and had him replaced.
The chief disaster in this film was the script which everyone seemed to know was a problem. Hitchcock went through several writers and everyone of them tried to get their name off of the project. Torn Curtain is a collection of spy cliches with guys running around in black trench coats and secret messages being passed around in bookstores. Even the big escape sequence from the East German spies involves a getaway on bicycles of all things, this really wasn't the same guy who directed North by Northwest.
Universal Studios insisted that Hitchcock use Julie Andrews as his leading lady. But if he was attempting to sex her up in the same way he had done with Ingrid Bergman, Eva Marie Saint and Grace Kelly he failed, Andrews is her usual sexless self. Hitchcock also had a lot of problems with Paul Newman who probably wondered how he had signed onto such a cut rate production. It seemed everyone knew they had a "turkey" on their hands.
Torn Curtain is the low point in Hitchcock's career. Marnie failed mostly due to the inability of Tippi Hedren to act her way out of the proverbial paper bag she was shoved into for that film.
However Torn Curtain is a complete miscalculation on the part of Hitchcock and certainly represents the bottom of the barrel of his Universal pictures although he really has only himself to blame.
128 minutes, written by Brian Moore although Moore said the credits should have read written by Alfred Hitchcock with an assist by Brian Moore.
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