Released in 1966, Torn Curtain is a Cold War thriller starring Paul Newman and Julie Andrews. Though overlooked as one of Hitchcock’s minor works, it is notable for an extended murder scene that shows a man being killed in real time. In the grim struggle, a man is headlocked, stabbed with a knife, struck with a shovel, and gassed in an oven. It is gruesome not for the tactical maneuvers, which are no more or less grisly than other homicidal depictions in movies, but for the scene’s painfully protracted duration.
