This is a very good spy movie from Alfred Hitchcock starring Julie Andrews and Paul Newman as an engaged couple, Dr. Sarah Sherman and Professor Michael Armstrong. Not only are they engaged but Sherman has been working as Armstrong's assistant. Sherman starts acting strangely. He defects to East Germany, saying the United States has stopped funding for his missile project. In truth he is fishing for information from an East German scientist, Professor Heinrich Gerhardt (Hansjörg Felmy) who appears to have resolved an issue that has stymied Armstrong. He just needs to convince Gerhardt that he has already resolved the issue and get him to share what he knows. He leaves for East Berlin having told his fiance he was off elsewhere. However she discovers his plans and follows him to East Berlin, where he announces he is defecting to East Germany.
Everything that could go wrong goes wrong. Hitchcock the master director makes a great scene where Armstrong and a spy kill an East German security man who was coming onto Professor Armstrong. This interfers with upcoming meeting between Armstrong and Gerhardt as the communists want to limit contact until they have studied Armstrong more thoroughly. However he does have access to the assistant. At first she does not want to cooperate but does after Armstrong tells her what he is doing, he is not a traitor. This gets Gerhardt excited, and he takes Armstrong aside and to his secret office, where he is able to trick Gerhardt into revealing his research. Armstrong takes it to memory as Gerhardt writes it down. About this time the police are onto Armstrong after they find the agent's body. However he runs away as Gerhardt realizes he has given his secrets away without getting anything in return.
Then comes the trip out of East Germany with many tense scenes, starting then leaving town in a bus, not a regular bus but following the same line as a regular bus. There are certain anti communists who help. They get a bit behind schedule, and eventually the police are onto them, so everyone scatters and they leave the bus behind. They eventually make it to meet with handlers in a theater, where they are smuggled inside costume baskets onto a boat.
Very tense and exciting movie and highly recommended.
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