Mike,

At the time Torn Curtain was made, the Cold War made it impossible to shoot
in the actual Museen zu Berlin, a collection of museums on an island, which
was located in East Berlin. The specific museum is actually known as The
Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery). Consequently, the museum
sequence in Torn Curtain was done largely with a series of matte paintings
by Albert Whitlock that was based upon photographs of the museum. The
process is described and illustrated in "The Invisible Art: The Legends of
Movie Matte Painting" by Mark Cotta Vaz and Craig Barron. If the sculpture
actually exists, it can likely be found in the complete catalogue of the
museum's sculpture (Nationalgalerie Berlin: Bestandskatalog Skulpturen. E.A.
Seemann Verlag, 2006).

Marshall Deutelbaum


-----Original Message-----
From: Film and TV Studies Discussion List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Frank, Michael
Sent: Sunday, June 22, 2008 6:04 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [SCREEN-L] hitchcock trivia query

 
in TORN CURTAIN there's a scene in what the film identifies as the "museen
zu berlin" [perhaps a real place, perhaps not] and in that scene hitchcock
twice frames his shots so that our view is dominated by a statue that is in
the center foreground and takes up well over half the frame . . . 

if anyone has any info about this, or even educated guesses, i'd be very
glad to hear them

many thanks

mike

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