An imitation Hitchcock film with Paul Newman that’s a whole helluva lot better than the real Hitchcock film with Paul Newman, being the execrable Torn Curtain.
Written by well-mentored Ernest Lehman, who employs a whole bunch of Hitchcock tricks, such as the purposeful public self-humiliation to escape villains (this time at a nudist gathering). Directed by old smoothie Mark Robson.
Best of all, Newman gives possibly his most relaxed-ever performance, as a boozy womanizing novelist who’s just been declared the youngest-ever winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature after five years of writing pulp. Stuck with an official escort, Swedish iceberg Elke Sommer, for the purposes of keeping the noisily cynical author out of trouble, he nonetheless crashes headlong into a nefarious plot to kidnap the Physics winner, Professor Stratman (Edward G. Robinson) and replace him with a lookalike who may be his long-lost brother, and make it look like he’s defecting back to his native East Germany.
Of course no-one believes the booze-addled writer who must turn into a fearless investigator without even a pair of underpants on the outside of his suit. He receives serious hubba-hubba support from Sommer and Diane Baker. There’s a sub-plot involving two Medicine laureates (Kevin McCarthy and Sergio Fantoni) warring over their prize. Very entertaining and playful, if more than a little overlong.
