the audience applauded

Excellent but underrated film

A Masterpiece!

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

In Sweden to be awarded the Nobel Prize in literature, author Andrew Craig (Paul Newman) jokes that fellow laureate Dr. Max Stratman (Edward G. Robinson) might be an impostor and no one would know. Turns out the joke is closer to reality than Craig realizes as Dr. Stratman has been replaced by a Communist lookalike. Craig becomes suspicious of the impostor and soon his suspicions put his life in danger.Mark Robson's enjoyable spy movie has Hitchcockian elements but doesn't quite reach the level of the master. The pieces are there, though. Newman's his usual charming self and has good chemistry with Elke Sommer and Diane Baker. Robinson's always great. It's a little overlong and the first hour could use a trim. Hitchcock would have jumped into the main plot a lot sooner, I think. But that's just one of the many differences between a decent director and a great one.

It's a shame Paul Newman got this role. By this time, what talent he had as the next Brando was ruined by fame. He played himself largely, egocentric, bored, half drunk. This was who he was in real life by then. It is also why he needed the thrill driving he was doing so avidly. He had hit the top and it wasn't enough.The script was fine, the supporting cast was fine and it could've been a very good film for its time. Done in a Hitchcockian manner, the mystery takes you along in spite of the main star's glib portrayal of a washed up author who gets the Nobel prize whether he wants it or not. Newman acts like he's poking fun at the other actors working hard to keep the film afloat. Another example of too much too soon. These type of decisions (putting big stars in films to get rewards at the bank) would be the reasons the old Hollywood died, however, the new Hollywood which is run by bankers does the same thing yet. Largely, they take for granted the stupidity of the average film goer and they are correct. People go to the movies and see awful films as well because like Newman, they are bored.

This film is only one of two (the other being "Charade") that is at once an homage to and a clone of a Hitchcock film. The similarities with "North by Northwest" are troubling and too numerous to mention, Paul Newman acting as a glib but younger Cary Grant, Elke Sommer as the "Hitchcock trademark icy blonde beauty", a turn at a nudist convention substituting for the scene at the auctioneer's, a chase by a car on a bridge replacing the crop-duster scene, etc., etc., down to the final dizzying climax. What makes it fascinating is that the writing (by the same Ernest Lehman who scripted "North by Northwest"), the international casting, the action melodrama pacing (borrowed from "The Adventures of Tintin"), the sexual innuendos, the music by a young Jerry Goldsmith (channelling Bernard Hermann's celebrated orchestral stingers over a John Barry-like jazz background) and the expert direction and editing by Mark Robson (an alumni, like Robert Wise, of the Val Lewton outfit at RKO) all make it possibly better than the original. It is certainly entertaining and chock-full of wonderfully spirited performances by the likes of Micheline Presle and even that other Val Lewton alumni Anna Lee in a small role. It is interesting to note that Hitchcock was himself inspired by this Cold War scenario for his own subsequent "Torn Curtain" - starring Paul Newman, but without the heavy sexual innuendos. I have only one reservation: "stunt" dubbing Edward G. Robinson' voice in a crucial scene about the magic of acting was a serious mistake. He certainly could have done it on his own.Long overdue on DVD. Maybe one day on Blu-Ray... In the meantime, thank God there's TCM! (And am I the only one who recognizes Wendy Hiller as Ms. Lee's silent companion in the hotel's lobby?)

For a Hitchcock knock-off, The Prize is not bad at all. There's an amusing situation (not Lincoln's nostril but the Nobel Prize ceremonies), scenic tours (not of the Riviera but of Stockholm), a gaunt killer (not an imported assassin who knows music but a waiter), a long, terrifying fall (not Madeleine Elster but Paul Newman) a supple blond ice queen (not Grace Kelly or Eva Marie Saint but Elke Sommer) and a dashing hero (not Cary Grant but Newman). And in an odd sort of way, it's Paul Newman who is as much a drawback to the movie as a plus. Newman plays Andrew Craig, an American author who has run out of steam after two great books. He's been awarded the Nobel Prize for literature and has arrived in Stockholm, full of martinis and self-loathing, for the award ceremonies. Craig is on his way to becoming a lush. The Nobel committee has assigned him a keeper, Inger Anderson (Elke Sommer), to keep him out of trouble, away from the booze and to see that he minds his manners. She's not altogether successful. At the hotel, Craig meets Dr. Max Stratman (Edward G. Robinson), an émigré after WWII from Germany who is now an American citizen. Stratman is receiving the Nobel for physics. They chat and agree to meet for further discussion the next day. Craig also meets Stratman's niece, Emily Stratman (Diane Baker). Yet at the next morning's press briefing, where all the Nobel winners have gathered to meet reporters, Stratman acts as if he's never met Craig before. Only we know why; Max Stratman has been propositioned to defect to East Germany...and when he refused, he was abducted and replaced by his twin brother, Walter Stratman, from behind the Iron Curtain. It's not long before Craig catches on that something nasty is happening. Partly out of concern for Max Stratman, partly out of boredom, he sets out to answer the questions that keep popping up in his head. Along the way he finds a body, is pushed off a tall building into an ocean channel and nearly killed by a tugboat, is threatened and then almost run over by a car, finds himself in an eery psychiatric hospital and then, pursued by two killers, in a meeting hall filled with nudists. What can he do but take off his clothes to blend in? At the climax, he finds himself clamoring around the cargo holds of an East German freighter where only he seems to believe the villains have hidden Stratman. And all along he is either helped or hindered, take your pick, by Inger Anderson and Emily Stratman. It's easy to tell who the bad guys are, but not so easy to figure out which of the two women is playing a double game. While all this is going on, preparation for the Nobel ceremonies is taking place...the receptions, the rehearsals, the getting-to-know the other winners, some of whom turn out to play key roles, especially the two who have won the Nobel for medicine. They dislike each other intensely yet find a grudging friendship when they must work together to save a key character. Best of all is Leo G. Carroll as Count Bertil Jacobson, charged with making sure everything at the ceremony moves smoothly. Carroll, a veteran of Hitchcock films, is droll and understated. Why is Newman essential to the movie? Because he has star power, and we recognize it as soon as he appears on the screen. Hitchcock was at his best with strong, charismatic actors. Newman provides the same strength here. Why is he also a weakness? Because he's no Cary Grant. The Prize is the same kind of international adventure, romantic and stylish, as are To Catch a Thief and North by Northwest. Where Grant could effortlessly turn irony into amused charm, however, Newman turns irony more often into a kind of petulant sarcasm, especially when he's acting half in the bag. And where Grant and Kelly melted the celluloid, Newman and Sommer don't make many sparks. They're playful, find themselves in compromising positions, smile out a few hopeful double entendres, but it's all just pleasant acting. On the other hand, Edward G. Robinson brings a great deal of authority to his role. There's not much of him in the second half of the movie. In the first half, however, we get to see him as an avuncular, kindly and smart old man, someone we can believe would make a man like Craig become concerned about, and then as a cold-eyed, deliberate and not-so-kind character. All-in-all, The Prize is a snappy, reasonably fast-paced cold-war adventure, a lot of fun to watch. I enjoy it whenever I see it. I just wish Hitchcock and Grant had made it.