Hello and welcome to the Classical Review… otherwise known as the Alfred Hitchcock Review… because yes, this week it’s another Hitchcock film: Torn Curtain! An American physicist, Michael Armstrong, shocks his friends and family by defecting to East Germany at the height of the Cold War! [VT- Shock!] Even his fiancée, Sarah, is surprised by the move. But! When she follows him behind the Iron Curtain she discovers… that her husband to be isn’t actually a Communist… he’s a double agent! Michael’s job is to discover Soviet nuclear secrets but, as they plot a way back to America, his cover is blown!

Is it the best film you’ve ever seen? Startlingly brilliant? Is it full of mystery and intrigue?!?!

Well, it’s not a total disaster.

Whilst there are some undeniably tense moments (almost all involving Wolfgang Keiling’s KGB agent Hermann Gromek), this is Hitchcock on autopilot and really quite unrewarding.

The 1966 spy thriller has one of the lowest reputations of his late works. But Hitchcock was incapable of making a completely uninteresting film- even when lumbered with the utterly unsympathetic Paul Newman and Julie Andrews (don’t give me that look- you know they are!) He’s a screen legend, one of the best cowboys of all time and his wry humour is fantastic… yet an academic he is not.

Much criticism at the time was aimed at Julie Andrews- whose performance is perfectly acceptable. No. Really. It’s fine. She’s… fine.

She’ll do.

Whatever.

But she doesn’t sing! Fresh from the hugely successful Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music, she was in danger of becoming type cast… because she is really ruddy good at that one thing! Make her do that one thing over and over please!

Never mind. It’s an okay film. There is even a murder scene that subverts the film convention of a quick and painless death… Film convention of the time, obviously. I don’t think Saw exactly follows those rules.

This is one of those frustrating films of two halves: In the first half of the film, there is an interesting, off-centred moral tone as Michael is an opportunistic missile scientist, trying to worm his way into East Berlin so he can pick the brain of a leading communist researcher. The second half is more of a straightforward chase that manages to loose the momentum and trust it has gained. One wonders whether there was, perhaps, a better film left on the cutting room floor.

‘It tears you apart with suspense’, reads the tag line. ‘It tears you apart with mildly frustrated boredom’, might be a more accurate title.

Citizen Kane was voted the best ever American Film in a BBC poll and it is a miracle of cinema. In 1941 a group of stage and radio actors, a first-time director, an inventive cinematographer and a hard-drinking writer were given the keys to a studio and total control… And they somehow made a masterpiece.

For Citizen Kane is not just a ‘great’ film it is all the lessons of the emerging era of sound.

Orson Welles, 26-year-old boy wonder of radio and stage, was given freedom by RKO Radio Pictures to make any picture he wished and this was the result. Originally titled “The American”, its inspiration was the life of William Randolph Hearst, a man who had constructed an empire of newspapers, radio stations, magazines and news services, and then built for himself the flamboyant monument of San Simeon, a castle furnished by pillaging the remains of nations.

The film opens with newsreel obituary footage that briefs us on the life and times of Charles Foster Kane; a reclusive millionaire newspaper tycoon whose last word, ‘rosebud’, no one understands. The newsreel footage provides a map of Kane’s rise to fame and subsequent downward spiral, and keeps us oriented as the screenplay skips around in time, piecing together the memories of those who knew him.

Curious about Kane’s dying word, the newsreel editor assigns a reporter, Thompson, to find out what it meant. Played by William Alland, Thompson is a thankless performance for whilst he triggers every flashback, his face is never seen. He questions Kane’s alcoholic mistress, his ailing old friend, his rich associate and the other witnesses as the timeline loops. By flashing back through the eyes of many witnesses, the film creates an emotional chronology, independent of time.

Along with the personal story of a man is the history of a period. Citizen Kane covers the rise of the penny press (here Joseph Pulitzer is the model), the Hearst-supported Spanish-American War, the birth of radio, the power of political machines, the rise of fascism and the growth of celebrity journalism. The Oscar-winning screenplay is densely constructed and covers an astonishing amount of ground from a record of a marriage (early bliss to a montage of increasingly chilly breakfasts) to Kane inventing the popular press.

From his great rise, to his disastrous adultery and his decline into seclusion.

“I don’t think any word can explain a man’s life,” says one of the searchers through the warehouse of treasures left behind by Charles Foster Kane. But then we have the famous series of shots leading to the closeup of the word “Rosebud” in curling paint on a sled that has been tossed into a furnace. This was Kane’s childhood sled, taken from him as he was torn from his family and sent east to boarding school.

Rosebud is the emblem of the security, hope and innocence of childhood, which Kane spent his life seeking to regain. It is the adult yearning for childhood that we learn to suppress. “Maybe Rosebud was something he couldn’t get, or something he lost,” says Thompson, the reporter, “Anyway, it wouldn’t have explained anything.” And it’s true- it wouldn’t have explained anything but that’s the point: it’s a demonstration that nothing can be explained, even in film.

“Citizen Kane” knows the sled is not the answer: it explains what Rosebud is, but not what Rosebud means.

The construction of the film shows how, after we are gone, our lives survive only in the memories of others, and those memories don’t necessarily agree with how we presented ourselves or believed ourselves to be seen. One Kane was kind, one was mean, one chose his mistress over his marriage and political career. There was a Kane who entertained millions and he was the same Kane who died alone.

The film is full of dazzling visual moments: candidate Kane addressing a political rally; the doorway of his mistress dissolving into a front-page photo in a rival newspaper; the towers of Xanadu; the camera swooping down through a skylight toward the pathetic Susan in a nightclub; the boy playing in the snow in the background as his parents determine his future.

Orson Welles brought a subtle knowledge of sound and dialogue to the film but brought in experimental cinematographer Gregg Toland to aid his creation of the film’s visual wonders. Welles himself plays Kane from age 25 until his deathbed, using makeup and body language to tell the story of a man increasingly captive inside his needs.

“All he really wanted out of life was love,” A friend sighs. “That’s Charlie’s story–how he lost it.”

The Manchurian Candidate is a film so brilliant that its title has now passed into everyday lexicon. In a fantastic opening sequence set in 1952, an American patrol squad in the Korean War are abducted by Soviet agents, flown to Manchuria, brainwashed and returned. Their charmless platoon sergeant, Raymond Shaw, played by Laurence Harvey, is now a hero in their minds. Thanks to their fake memories he is given the Medal of Honour for saving their lives.

But he has, in fact, been turned into a Soviet Mole within the American establishment, ready to become an assassin at just the sight of a coded queen in a pack of cards!

Because people never leave everyday objects with possible hidden messages lying around…

Two years after their capture, Harvey is activated and ordered to kill a presidential candidate. That no such brain programming is possible has not prevented it being absorbed as fact and is testament to the film’s prowess.

‘The Manchurian Candidate’ is astutely directed by John Frankenheimer, a sharp filmmaker who had previously been working on live TV drama- (because all dramas on television were once live and doesn’t that just sound like the best fun in the world? Can you imagine the actors in Downton Abbey running from set to set?) Author of the hit comedy film The Seven Year Itch, George Axelrod, adapted the story from an ingenious, deadpan novel by Richard Condon.

Released in 1962, the film has forever coloured American history by becoming linked to President Kennedy’s assassination in 1963. Much speculation about shooter Lee Harvey Oswald’s background and motives were sparked by this film’s central premise.

Which, again, is not possible.

And yet… the film’s star Frank Sinatra purchased the rights to the film in 1964 and kept it from circulation until 1988- which, legend has it, was inspired by remorse after Kennedy’s death!

Uh no, sorry to disabuse you, but Sinatra actually had a dispute with United Artists about the profits and decided it would earn no money for the studio or anyone else.

Because cutting off your nose to spite your face is the sort of thing you can do when you’re so rich you could just by another, gold plated, nose!

It is at least now available on DVD and, in my mind, is a highlight of Sinatra’s acting career. The film also manages to be astonishingly modern with a bitingly astringent political satire and uncannily contemporary story. The villains of the piece plan to exploit a terrorist act to rally the nation to hysteria and sweep into the White House with martial law. Rather kindly, the plot cheerfully divides the blame between the political right and left as the baddies use anti-communist hysteria as a cover for a communist takeover.

This is a clever film that trusts its viewers to be just as intelligent to follow the twisting, surrealistic plot- especially in the way fragmented memories of the Korean brainwashing leak into the nightmares of the survivors. This is how Sinatra’s Major Bennett Marco, another member of the brainwashed group, begins to suspect something is off. Angela Lansbury, playing Raymond’s mother and nominated for an Academy Award for her performance, is one of the greatest villains of movie history… but I’m refusing to give too much away as this is one film you really, really, really, must see!