Feb

17

Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain: A Glimpse of Life in the DDR

February 17, 2007 |

At a moment when Das Leben der Anderen is generating huge buzz as a portrait of East German life under watchful Stasi eyes, it was odd to stumble across Alfred Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain, which featured Julie Andrews and Paul Newman as faux defectors trying to slip into and then out of the DDR, with a little help from their friends… It has its moments (a Stasi agent stabbed, strangled and ultimately gassed; a weird bus ride from Leipzig to Berlin; a Polish woman looking for a sponsor; a man shouting ”Feuer” in a crowded theatre) but it’s a pretty unflattering portrait of ”State Security”, who must not have mastered their act yet, to judge by the number of missed opportunities to catch the amateur spies as they make their escape. And it feels like Hollywood’s take on East Germany, not the real thing. More than anything else, I’ll remember the odd details, like African students in the halls at the University in Leipzig, and the number of moments where the film moves things along without words. But really, it’s pretty cheesy to me, especially with a silly ending in Sweden.

The shit we find ourselves watching at 4AM, while we wait for sleep to come…


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