Julie Andrews condemned by the National Roman Catholic Office for Motion Pictures? Oh, yes. It happened -- thanks to Alfred Hitchcock, of all people.
In the opening scene of Hitchcock's TORN CURTAIN, lovers Michael Armstrong (Paul Newman) and Sarah Sherman (Andrews) are seen making love to fight off the chills on an ocean liner with a broken heating system. "Marriage should come before a honeymoon cruise," Sarah says, teasingly. "You're on the wrong boat!" Michael replies.
Mild stuff by today's standards, but it earned the film a "morally objectionable in part for all" designation.
"Shocking" love scenes are only the beginning. TORN CURTAIN is a taut, cloak-and-dagger-style Cold War thriller, in which physicist Michael seems to be on the verge of defecting to the East. When his suspicious fiancée follows him to East Berlin, the couple is quickly caught up in international tensions, dangerous games and even murder: The movie's centerpiece (and most famous sequence) involves a lengthy, shocking attack on a security officer, who is not about to give up without a struggle.
"He didn't care very much for plot," Andrews recalled of Hitchcock in a recent interview with the Archive of American Television. "The thing that turned Hitchcock on was the manipulation of the public. You'd be terrified out of your wits one moment and then weeping or laughing with relief the next. And that's what he wanted -- to keep you on the edge of your seat."
Critics weren't wowed in 1966, but audiences couldn't resist the allure of Newman and Andrews -- and they apparently liked what they saw, since the movie was a solid success. Many reviewers have since re-evaluated TORN CURTAIN. "...(F)ull of amazing sequences that show the director at the peak of his powers - the chalkboard scene, the farmhouse murder, the bus scene, the scene at the ballet," wrote San Francisco Chronicle critic Mick LaSalle in 2019. "It's tense from start to finish."
