#admiral gromek

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Georganne Johnson Star Trek: The Next Generation 'The Emissary' (1998)

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Vice Admiral Gromek: Starfleet Admiral, Sector Command. Ordered the Enterprise to a specified set of coordinates to rendezvous with a Federation Special Envoy. The Admiral didn’t provide any more information except to say that it was a top priority mission and that the envoy would brief them. 

Vice Admiral Gromek appeared in TNG’s “Emissary”

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Star Trek TNG - S2E20 “The Emissary”

Not to be confused with "Emissary," Deep Space Nine's pilot episode.

I'll get to DS9 eventually, I promise.

THE PREMISE

The Enterprise receives an urgent message from Starfleet Command ordering them to a set of coordinates with no stated reason. While en route, they're contacted by Admiral Gromek, who informs that they are set to rendezvous with a Federation emissary who will brief them on their mission. She refuses to disclose any more details, only that Starfleet considers the mission a top security matter. The Enterprise intercepts a probe carrying the emissary, a half-human half-Klingon woman called K'Ehleyr (pronounced ky-lar). It is immediately clear that she and Worf know each other, and he's not pleased to see her.

K'Ehleyr informs the crew that Starfleet has detected a Klingon battlecruiser called the IKS T'Ong, which was launched over 70 years prior when the Federation and the Klingons were still at war. The ship's crew are about to awaken from suspended animation and will most likely attack the nearest Federation outpost. Over Worf's objections, Picard orders him to work with K'Ehleyr to come up with an alternative to simply killing the Klingons.

MY REVIEW

K'Ehleyr. I already know that constantly typing that out will be a pain.

Speaking of K'Ehleyr, she's played by Suzie Plakson, with a slightly dialled back Klingon design and a more versatile performance which is a good method of conveying her half-humanity.

It quickly becomes clear that she and Worf were ex-lovers, and their vehement (but entertaining) arguments mean that they're barely able to concentrate on their tasks.

This isn't the first time a main cast member has encountered someone with whom they have romantic history, but fortunately this pairing (and this episode) is a lot more compelling.

K'Ehleyr and Worf have a fun dynamic, with their previous failed relationship creating interesting tension between them throughout the episode.

However, it's worth noting that Suzie Plakson had previously played the Vulcan Dr Selar in "The Schizoid Man" and was supposed to reprise that role in this episode before her character was replaced with K'Ehleyr. I like K'Ehleyr and she and Worf play off each other well, but I feel the story could've been even more interesting if the ex-lovers had come from two different cultures.

Also, if we can employ a little bit of maths here, in "The Icarus Factor" we found out that it has been ten years since Worf reached the Age of Ascension at 15, meaning that Worf is no older than 25, which I call bullshit on because Michael Dorn was in his mid-thirties at the time. Anyway, if these slightly janky maths are to be believed, Worf and K'Ehleyr were in their late teens when they broke up. So if you think of their dynamic in terms of two college exes having a fight, it becomes even more fun to watch.

After one particularly vicious argument, Troi suggests that K'Ehleyr use the holodeck to vent her frustrations. She chooses Worf's training program (previously seen in "Where Silence Has Lease") and Worf joins her in fighting off some aliens which wouldn't look out of place in an episode of He-Man. Stimulated by the battle, they fuck, and Worf starts the Klingon vow of marriage, but K'Ehleyr refuses to capitulate to Klingon tradition and storms out.

Unfortunately, we now need to return to the episode's main threat. The IKS T'Ong is unique among the Klingons we've seen so far due to being from another era, with the crew still convinced that they're at war with the Federation. The ship's obsolete nature is also touched upon when the more advanced Enterprise-D is able to detect it through its cloaking device, and they give chase.

K'Ehleyr asks Picard to let the Klingons die with dignity in battle (which feels slightly out of character for her, at least in my opinion), but Worf has other ideas. The T'Ong opens hailing frequencies with the Enterprise... and is met with Worf and K'Ehleyr in traditional Klingon uniforms, posing as the ship's captain and First Officer.

They tell the other Klingons that the war is over, and that they will destroy the T'Ong if they don't stand down, which they do. The plan is an ingenious non-violent alternative, and shows just how effective Worf and K'Ehleyr can be when they put their differences aside and put their ridged heads together.

With the conflict resolved, K'Ehleyr goes to transport to the T'Ong to begin acclimating the other Klingons to the 24th century. Worf comes along to see her off, and K'Ehleyr admits to Worf that she had been tempted to accept his vow of marriage, but it wasn't the right time. She expresses hope that their paths will cross again. Even though such a thing is unlikely in a more episodic series like this, I'd welcome it.

7/10 - There's some missed potential here and there, but otherwise a welcome step up in quality.

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Episode Reviews - Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 2 (5 of 5)

As the month of February is almost finished, we now also finish our look into the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation by looking at the last three episodes of that season…

Episode 20: The Emissary

Plot (as adapted from Wikipedia):

The Enterprise receives an urgent message from Starfleet Command ordering them to a set of coordinates without stating a reason. While en route, they are contacted by Admiral Gromek who informs them that the Enterprise is to rendezvous with a Federation emissary who will brief them on their mission. She refuses to disclose any details, only that Starfleet considers the mission a "top security matter".

 Data reports that the emissary is being transported in a class 8 probe, an unconventional mode of travel and barely large enough to contain a person, traveling at warp 9. Picard notes the evident urgency of the mission. The Enterprise intercepts the probe and beams it aboard, and its passenger is revealed to be a half-Klingon half-human woman named K'Ehleyr. It is immediately clear that K'Ehleyr and Lt. Worf know each other, and Worf is not pleased to see her.

 K'Ehleyr informs the command staff that Starfleet has detected a Klingon battlecruiser called the T'Ong, which was launched from the Klingon homeworld over 75 years ago, when the Klingons and the Federation were still at war. The crew has been in suspended animation and are about to awaken, at which point it is feared they will immediately attack the nearest Federation outpost. There are several such outposts nearby, none of which would not be able to adequately defend themselves. As the nearest Klingon ship is three days away, the Enterprise is to intercept them instead. Though K'Ehleyr strongly believes that any attempt to reason with the Klingons will fail, and advises that Picard plan to destroy the ship, Picard disagrees and orders the staff to come up with alternatives.

 Picard orders Worf to work with K'Ehleyr over Worf's objections, as Worf concedes his reasons are purely personal. Worf and his ex-love interest have a heated argument, barely managing to concentrate on their task. At Troi's suggestion K'Ehleyr goes to the holodeck to vent her frustrations, where she chooses one of Worf's exercise programs, a hand-to-hand combat simulation. Worf finds her there and joins her in the program, and invigorated and stimulated by the battle, they mate. Following tradition, Worf then starts the Klingon vow of marriage, but K'Ehleyr refuses to take the vow and storms out.

 At a senior staff briefing, K'Ehleyr presents her plan to deal with the T'Ong: If they find the crew still asleep, they keep them that way until a Klingon starship can meet them in three days; if the crew is awake, they will have to destroy them. Picard is still reluctant to accept that a peaceful solution is impossible, but before they can work out an alternative plan, Data reports that they have detected the T'Ong. Data detects life signs, but is unable to determine whether or not the crew is awake. Suddenly, the T'Ong fires on the Enterprise, cloaks, and moves away. The Enterprise is able to track the older vessel even under cloak, so they set off in pursuit.

 K'Ehleyr urges Picard to let the Klingons die with honor, in battle. However, Worf comes up with another option. While Picard and first officer Commander Riker position themselves out of sight, Worf and K'Ehleyr, clad in full traditional Klingon command uniforms, appear as captain and first officer of the Enterprise, informing Captain K'Temoc of the T'Ong that the war is over and ordering them to surrender. K'Temoc initially refuses, believing it to be a Federation trick, but when Worf, in typical Klingon manner, shows his resolve and threatens to destroy the T'Ong, K'Temoc grudgingly agrees.

 K'Ehleyr transports to the T'Ong to begin the process of acclimating the Klingons to life in the 24th century and await the arrival of the Klingon escort that has been sent to meet them. Before departing, she admits to Worf that she was tempted to take the marriage vow with him, but felt it was not the right moment for it, and implies that their paths will cross again. Worf informs her that he was not purely motivated by honour to take the vow and that he will be incomplete without her.

Review:

Of this season’s Klingon episodes, I think this one is better than ‘A Matter of Honor’.  There’s no annoying B-plot, for starters, and not only are we focused on Worf, but we also get him dealing with one of the few women in Trek history that could really work for Worf.  The guest character of K’Ehleyr is uniquely suited to Worf because she’s a biological hybrid of Klingon and human.  This makes her someone who, in her own way, shares Worf’s culture-clash dilemma and has to reconcile being of two different worlds.  She’s also got a personality not a million miles removed from Jadzia Dax, who as DS9 fans know would later become Worf’s wife.

 It’s also interesting to see K’Ehleyr interact with Deanna Troi and compare notes on their experiences of being hybrids of humanity and another species.  Up to now, Troi’s nature as a metaphor for people of mixed heritage hasn’t been utilised much by the series, which is a shame.  However, at this point in Trek there wasn’t much of that kind of plot going on for a lot of the characters that could be taken as metaphorical representatives of certain groups.  It’s a pity, but on the other hand does allow later exploration to better effect elsewhere in this and other Trek shows.  From the perspective of hindsight, this episode also has a very impactful legacy, but more on that when we come to it.  For now, I give this episode 9 out of 10.

Episode 21: Peak Performance

Plot (as adapted from Wikipedia):

The Enterprise is ordered by Starfleet Command to take part in simulated combat exercises to prepare for the Borg threat. A renowned Zakdorn strategist named Sirna Kolrami is sent to serve as observer and mediator of the exercise. Commander Riker challenges Kolrami to a game of Strategema, knowing he has no chance to win, just for the honour of playing a grandmaster. Dr Pulaski pushes Data to challenge the arrogant Kolrami, assuming Kolrami will be no match for Data's android reflexes and computational ability. When the two later play, however, Data is also soundly beaten, causing him to become convinced he is malfunctioning and remove himself from duty.

 The combat exercise pits the Enterprise against an 80-year-old retired Federation ship U.S.S. Hathaway, which is in orbit around a nearby planet. Picard is to command the Enterprise, while Riker is to choose a crew to man the Hathaway. Riker recruits Chief Engineer Geordi La Forge and Lt. Worf as his senior staff and sneaks acting Ensign Wesley Crusher into his crew under the pretence of him ‘observing for educational purposes. Riker and his crew beam over to the old ship and begin their efforts to restore it to working order. The Hathaway is easily outclassed by the Enterprise, and has no antimatter, making warp speed impossible. Wesley, however, returns to the Enterprise under false pretences and surreptitiously beams a school experiment containing a small amount of antimatter to the Hathaway, which would allow them a very short warp burst, though they are uncertain it will work.

 Pulaski and Troi are unable to persuade Data that he is not malfunctioning, but Picard reminds him of his duty, and advises him "It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness; that is life." Data's confidence is restored, and he returns to the bridge.

 As the battle begins, Worf accesses the Enterprise's sensors, generating a fake sensor & viewscreen image of a Romulan warship attacking, and while the Enterprise is distracted, the Hathaway scores the first hits. Kolrami, who was initially dismissive of Riker's ability, is impressed. The Enterprise regroups and prepares to attack the Hathaway when sensors report another intruding ship, a Ferengi marauder. Picard realizes too late that this ship is not a sensor trick, and the Ferengi attack leaves the Enterprise's phasers locked in simulation mode and unable to return fire.

 The Ferengi commander, DaiMon Bractor, is unaware of the wargames and suspicious of the behaviour of the two Federation ships, concluding the Hathaway must be valuable, and demands that Picard surrender it to him. Picard and Riker devise a risky plan, where the Enterprise fires photon torpedoes at the Hathaway, with the Hathaway using their short warp burst to jump to safety an instant before the torpedoes detonate. The Ferengi, believing their prize has been destroyed, turn their attention to the Enterprise, but Worf tricks their sensors into detecting another Federation ship approaching, and the Ferengi flee.

 With the wargames over, Data challenges Kolrami to a Strategema rematch. This time, Data is able to hold Kolrami in check; Kolrami grows more and more frustrated as the match progresses, ultimately throwing down his controls in disgust and storming off. Data explains that he altered his strategy, giving up opportunities for advancement in order to maintain a stalemate, which he believes he could have maintained indefinitely. He initially regards the result as a draw, but after prodding from Pulaski, admits his success.

Review:

I quite enjoy this episode because it’s a fun and interesting departure from what you normally expect from both Trek in general and TNG in particular.  The reference back to the issue of the Borg shows some actual continuity in a show that frequently stands out from its spin-offs by being a show where you could watch a lot of episodes out of order and it wouldn’t make much difference. All too often, the adventures of Picard’s Enterprise are self-contained to each episode and don’t always have much subsequent effect, as opposed to Deep Space Nine where the crew doesn’t have the ‘sail off into the sunset option’, or Voyager whose whole series is predicated on the timeline of a long journey home.

 There are some interesting lessons about leadership worked in, such as Picard’s defence of Riker’s command style to Kolrami and how Polaski, Troi and Picard try to deal with Data’s concerns following his initial defeat at Strategema.  Picard’s line about it ‘being possible to commit no mistakes and still lose’ is certainly true, though by the same token it is also possible that if someone loses while making no mistakes of their own, that does not necessarily mean no mistake has been committed anywhere.

 In the context of the game between Kolrami and Data, or any other such head-to-head contest, losing because one person is simply a bit better is all well and good, but applied to other situations, other people come into the equation who can make errors even if you don’t. In my working life, for example, I’ve found that if staff in positions of authority do not create a system of working that eliminates all preventable errors, there is only so much other staff can do to compensate.  Also, how do you define what is a mistake?  To my mind, most of society is based on the faulty premise that all people are the same, resulting in systems required to make corrections for anyone who in reality contradicts that supposition.  Within that premise, such after-thought amendments are correct, but to my mind they are symptomatic of a huge mistake resulting for egocentric arrogance and privilege-based delusion.

 As a whole, this episode is very good and is probably the best point at which to end if you wanted the season ending on a high. However, as there’s still another episode to go, I’ll just give this episode a score of 9 out of 10 and move on to the final episode of this round.

Episode 22: Shades of Gray

Plot (as adapted from Wikipedia):

During a geological survey on Surata IV, Commander Riker is struck by a thorn growing on a motile vine plant. The away team immediately beams back to the Enterprise, where Dr Pulaski finds out that the thorn has released deadly microbes into Riker's body. Within a matter of hours, the microbes will reach Riker's brain, killing him. To try to save Riker's life, Pulaski puts him into a machine that will artificially stimulate his brain neurons, keeping them active and resisting the microbes. This causes Riker to relive memories of his past adventures aboard the Enterprise. Riker's first memories are of reasonably neutral occasions, such as his first meeting with Lieutenant Commander Data. He soon moves on to more passionate and even erotic memories, such as meeting the cheerful young Edo women on Rubicon III, the matriarch Beata on Angel One, or the computer-generated holodeck woman Minuet.

 However, while pleasing to Riker's mind, the passionate memories only worsen Riker's condition, as the microbes feed on the positive endorphins his brain is creating. Pulaski and Counsellor Troi therefore agree to try to make the machine evoke negative memories instead. Thus, Riker relives memories of Lieutenant Tasha Yar's death and the apparent death of Deanna Troi's child. This has the desired effect, as the negative endorphins drive the microbes away, but the endorphins are not strong enough. As a last resort, Pulaski uses the machine to evoke memories of raw, primitive feelings of fear and survival. Riker then remembers being enveloped by the creature Armus, his fight with the alien-controlled Admiral Quinn, and the fight with Klingon officer Klag on board the warship Pagh. Seeing that the raw emotions work best, Pulaski intensifies the dreams to come at a more rapid pace. This finally kills the microbes and Riker recovers.

Review:

Apparently, this episode came about because the series went over-budget on episodes like ‘Elementary, Dear Data’ and ‘Q Who’, and Paramount insisted the show do a quick episode on the cheap to satisfy the commissioned number of episodes within the allotted budget.  The result is a very poor episode that is TNG’s only clip show, and a stupidly premature one to boot.  It’s made even more annoying by Wikipedia’s inaccuracies that I’ve had to correct; Riker is infected by microbes that Polaski notes are ‘neither bacteria nor a virus’, yet a virus is what Wikipedia calls it, and Riker is remembering past events, not dreaming.  If it was a dream he was having, we’d have new footage showing a dream sequence, not clips of past episodes acting like a memory slide-show.  Even Riker claims to have been ‘dreaming’ when he recovers, which doesn’t help.  Remembering and dreaming are two totally separate things, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a total bloody moron.

 Mind you, they have company, because doing one last episode on the cheap of this poor quality was so not the way to go. They could have done a bottle episode without the clips by doing something like a night in Ten-Forward, or a holodeck-goes-wrong episode where the only sets where the holodeck simulation and the corridor outside the holodeck.  How anyone thought a clip show was the way to go when you’re only at the end of a show’s second season, I’ll never know.  A pity Red Dwarf didn’t reach its third season, and the bottle episode ‘Marooned’, until the early 90’s.  Trek could have actually learned a lot about how to do a bottle episode well from just that one bit of British sit-com gold.  As it is, at least this episode now serves as a cautionary tale on how not to do bottle episodes.  I give it 0 out of 10.

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Out of all the TNG variants of an admiral’s uniform the twice seen S2 one here on Nakamura in The Measure of a Man (and Gromek in Emissary) bears the closest resemblance. The heavily emphasized gold bar on the sleeves and collarbone

Admiral Picard's uniform, seen in a flashback sequence in Star Trek: Picard. On display at Destination Star Trek. Photos from @trekcore

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Torn Curtain is widely thought to rank amongst the worst of Hitchcock, a failed emulation of the Bond films so popular in the era, and remembered by Hitchcock afficionados mainly for the rupture in the relationship between Hitchcock and composer Bernard Herrman: Herrman wrote a score for the film but Hitchcock didn’t like it and commissioned a new, pop-ier one from John Addison. It was the last time they worked together.

David Thomson in The New Biographical Dictionary of Film writes, ‘No matter how many times the profit ratio of Psycho is repeated, it does not alter the fact that Hitchcock made several flops, several films in which the entire narrative structure — over which he spent such time and care — is grotesquely miscalculated. Stage Fright, The Trouble with Harry, Lifeboat, and Torn Curtain seem to me thumpingly bad films, helpless in the face of intransigent plots, true delicacy of humour and uncooperative players (p.401).’ It’s all relative I suppose but I don’t agree; or rather, Hitchcock’s worst offers more pleasures than almost anybody else’s best. I found a lot to like in Torn Curtain.

The story is an espionage thriller about a Professor (Paul Newman) and his assistant/fiancée (Julie Andrews), three months from tying the knot, who are at a scientific conference in Scandinavia when, much to the fiancée’s astonishment, the Professor decides to defect to East Berlin. Is he a traitor or is he a spy? We soon find out.  The film boasts memorable and typically Hitchcockian set-pieces: the killing in the country-side farm, Paul Newman being followed in a museum, the couple escaping the university, the way they outmanoeuvre the Stasi and manage to escape from the ballet when every entrance is blocked by police, etc. Really, even minor Hitchcock is full of pleasures. Of Hollywood filmmakers, only Lubitsch is Hitchcock’s equal in engaging with the audience, making us complicit in what’s going, trusting us to be co-creators of aspects of the story being told and teasing, tricking, playing with us in order to please and delight.

Stars:

Fig A

The performances of the stars of Torn Curtain have been widely criticised, Thomson calling them ‘drab’ (p.402). Others regurgitating stories of how Hitchcock had wanted Eva Maria Saint and Cary Grant; how Paul Newman and Julie Andrews, the top box-office stars of this period, were imposed on Hitchcock by the studio; how Newman was — to Hitchock’s annoyance — too method; how he found Julie Andrews  not beautiful or sexy enough.

Fig. B

Be that as it may, there’s no question that he took great care with the presentation of these stars. We’re introduced to them in bed, with their coats over the blankets trying to warm up. Then, we see their name tags of the characters they play in alternating close-ups, first Dr. Sarah Sherman and then Professor Michael Armstrong. We first see the backs of their heads, then extreme close-ups of the couple kissing. We know they’ve just had sex: ‘let’s call this lunch,’ says Armstrong. It’s a sexy spin on Julie Andrews’ star persona. Here is Mary Poppins and the novice from The Sound of Music in bed with Paul Newman; and they’re not even married! That must have been a thrilling star entrance to fans of both stars. Moreover, Hitchcock and his team light them beautifully. Look at the shine of the pin spot in Andrew’s eyes in fig. A. How Newman’s eyes, then widely publicised  as the most beautiful blues in the world, are presented in an enormous close-up, so big as to encompass only one eye, made to shine against the light (fig. B). Note too, the prominent display of Newman’s body throughout the film (fig. C).

Fig. C

‘Performance’ is not everything in commercial filmmaking, particularly when it’s a question of stars. Newman and Andrews are not bad; the director makes an interesting play on audience expectations, giving them a theatrical star entrance, lighting them gorgeously, dressing them both attractively and meaningfully, and playing on and developing their star personas, particularly that of Andrews. I loved seeing them in this, and stars by their very nature should not need to play a ‘role of a lifetime’ to bring their audience pleasure; often their presence is enough for their fans. When presented as carefully and to so much advantage as here, it is much more than enough. Newman and Andrews were a draw then and are still reasons to see this film.

The point-of-view of Sarah, and the film at this moment, on Michael. He’s naked, enticing, but not clearly visible; rendered enticing but mysterious. Another example of Hitchcock showing stars as attractions but in such a way that it’s meaningfully expressive of the drama in the film at the moment as well as its broader themes.

Performance:

It is true that the stars, delightful as they are to see, do not give memorable performances. But I do think it would be fair to say that some of the performances in Torn Curtain have become legendary. Wolfgang Kieling as Hermann Gromek, Armstrong’s East German body-guard, with his East-European accent and his American slang, funny and menacing, always watchable, is an outsize cartoon. It’s a particular type of performance, very theatrical, very knowing, aimed at the audience, and clearly a type Hitchcock delights in. I’ve made a gif of his famous death scene so as to exaggerate his hand gestures (see above). This is an actor who knows how to make the most of a scene even in the absence of his face or even most of his body, who steals the scene from his co-stars by showing us his expiration only with a wave of his fingers, but they wave and wave, each movement expressing something slightly different but within an overall arc, like those hams who can turn being shot into a five minute dance with death. I find it delightful, so much better than merely ‘realistic’ and Hitchcock must have also, or he would have shot it differently, shortened it or cut it altogether.

Much as I love Kieling’s performance, one never gets a sense that he’s playing a real person. This is not true of Lila Kedrova’s marvellous turn as the Countess Kuchinska, the Polish Countess, not ‘communistical’, sneering at the quality of the tobacco and the coffee and desperate for American sponsorship of her visa application. As you can see below, each of her ‘faces’ is beautifully expressive, and she does run the gamut of expression. I tried to do some image capture to illustrate and it was clearly evident what a range of vivid expressions she brought even within one shot; no single still would do, so I created a compilation from her scenes in the cafe with Julie Andrews and Paul Newman. Kedrova’s performance is theatrical, almost Delsartean in her gestures, and she looks like a wounded French bulldog, but one gets a sense of a person who’s elegant, pained, powerful but helpless, bewildered. There’s a person that’s constructed out of those arresting expression and those wounded eyes. How did the countess arrive from Poland to East Berlin? What did she have to live through? It’s clear that she was once beautiful and that maybe she could no longer use that to the advantage that she once did. What did her class, her gender, her beauty and her foreignness play in her survival? What sort of desperation drives an already old person to go to such lengths to get out?

  I love the last shot in the clip above. The countess has finally gotten the American couple the information they needed but just as they succeed the police arrives. She kicks the policeman to allow the couple to escape, knowing that that means she won’t. Hitchcock shows up a close-up of the rifle falling down the stairs, and then the camera cranes right up the stairs into a close-up of Lila Kedrova’s face as the Countess says, ‘My sponsor, my sponsor for United States of America. It’s simultaneously camp but also touching. Kedrova is giving a charismatic, theatrical, performance (her elegant posture on the stairs, her voicing of the dialogue) that is also very touching. For her all is lost. And Hitchcock wants us to see this enough to arrange a complex shot that is in itself arresting, spectacular. The American couple has a chance; for the Polish Countess in East Berlin, there’s no more hope. It’s lovely.

Dress, Décor, Angle and Framing as Part of Mise-en-scéne:

  I understand that Hitchcock was disappointed with Torn Curtain but was pleased with what he’d been able to accomplish as an exercise on light and composition. These are some aspects of the film that aroused my interest and delighted my sight.

In Denmark, her brown Edith Head suit, making a clean image against the green of the bed-spread.

  In East Berlin, greyer, each looking in a different direction; neither clear about where they stand as a couple; she in the light and facing light thinking that he, in the dark and against the wall, might be a traitor

The wonderful scene at the museum where Michael is trying to lose the ‘bodyguard’ who’s tailing him, surrounded by treasures of ancient civilisations and by much beauty, but empty of visitors. The museum is itself a ruin and the emptiness of the place evokes that culture itself is in ruins in that culture, both presence and absence, an echo-chamber of danger. 

  The fantastic looking scene where the couple escapes from the University of Leipzig. Why does this type of shot and framing still thrill in a Hitchcock film when it’s become a cliché since?

  At the Ballet in East Berlin, in a scene that echoes and rhymes with the one in the university, with the same ruse used to escape, but now the couple buffeted by the crowd, trying to stick together, circumstances isolating and separating them, but both desperately trying to hold onto each other: a metaphor for the whole film and beautifully done. 

Poetry:

The reason why I started off writing this piece, but which I’ve left to the end, is that even in the worst of Hitchcock one finds moments of real poetry. In the scene below there are many things to admire. I decided to start the clip in the previous scene, so that you can see the close-up on Julie Andrews’ face as she says ‘East Berlin, but that’s behind the Iron Curtain’. That will rhyme with the very last shot of the scene, which is a masterpiece of expression. In between note how the cut is on Michael’s face seen slightly from behind now on the plane. From her to him, each facing in the opposite direction, and now in a new context, note how the camera tracks slowly back to allow us to take the new context in, and in full, before the camera pans right to a close-up of the befuddled Sarah. Note how the cutting speeds up when he sees her, the repetition of the tracking shot, but much faster as Michael heads to Sarah, then the change in direction but at the same speed as he approaches her. They’re superb choices.

  But the pièce-de-resistance is the last shot on Sarah. That last close-up, after Michael has told her to stop following him and go home, which rhymes with the close-up of her finding out he’s going to East Berlin, but now filmed from above, instead of slightly below as in the previous instance, and then the beautiful way the image begins to dissolve, goes out of focus, distorts, the length of its duration, and then the quick cut onto the opening doors of the plane with its view of East Berlin’s airport. It’s like all Sarah’s hopes, dreams, are extinguished and expire only to be confronted by the harshness of a new reality with all her past knowledge put into doubt. It’s beautiful. A great moment of cinema. And one of many reasons to see the film.

  José Arroyo

On the Delights of Minor Hitchcock 1 – Torn Curtain Torn Curtain is widely thought to rank amongst the worst of Hitchcock, a failed emulation of the Bond films so popular in the era, and remembered by Hitchcock…