The first of Alfred Hitchcock’s Cold War thrillers – it was followed by Topaz – Torn Curtain tells the story of the apparent defection of U.S. physicist Michael Armstrong (Paul Newman) to the Soviet Bloc. After a scientific conference in Copenhagen, Armstrong surreptitiously embarks for East Berlin, but fiancée Sarah Sherman (Julie Andrews), who also works as his assistant (calling HR!), manages to follow him. Though appalled by his treason, Sarah reluctantly opts to remain with Michael, whose real intentions slowly reveal themselves. The film’s centerpiece is a justly celebrated sequence involving an existential struggle with secret-police minder Gromek (Wolfgang Kieling, who in an odd coincidence later moved from West to East Germany): Armstrong and a farmer’s wife (Carolyn Conwell) – actually a member of a dissident group helping with escapes to the West – engage in a prolonged, exhausting effort to dispatch the Stasi agent, who battles tenaciously for his life. Another of Torn Curtain’s attractions is the belated appearance of Lila Kedrova as a sympathetic Polish countess who expertly oscillates between comic and tragic modes in her attempts to wheedle U.S. visa sponsorship in exchange for aiding Michael and Sarah’s escape. Less happily, Torn Curtain marked the rupture of Hitchcock’s long-term collaboration with composer Bernard Herrmann, whom the director fired for failing to deliver a more pop-oriented score, replacing him with John Addison.