Torn Curtain (1966)

When he made Torn Curtain in 1966, Hitchcock was sixty-six, the Production Code was thirty-six, and both were in decline. The curtain of the title is the Iron Curtain, and Paul Newman plays a nuclear scientist assigned to travel to East Germany as a Communist sympathizer to bring back the mathematical formula for an anti-missile system. The Production Code had three major concerns with the script. In one of the movie’s earliest scenes, there appeared to be inappropriate ‘intimacies of lovemaking’ between Newman and costar Julie Andrews. Code reviewers also worried that the killing of the East German bodyguard assigned to Newman was entirely too gruesome, and a scene in which Newman cried, ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater might create panic among real theatergoers. Hitchcock recut the love scene, had Newman shout ‘Fire!’ in German? presumably so only German audiences would panic?but left the bodyguard’s murder uncut because he wanted to show just how difficult and messy it is to kill a man. He succeeded in this, and the murder is the high point of a disappointing film and a worthy addition to Hitchcock’s canon of memorable scenes.

Mujid Suleiman Kazimi (1947–2015): A Preeminent Palestinian-American Scientist

Outstanding nuclear scientist and leading Palestinian-American Mujid S. Kazimi died suddenly in July 2015. This tribute summarizes his professional career and his remarkable contribution to nuclear science, his involvement with Arab-American organizations, and the personal qualities he brought to a lifelong commitment to Palestine.

Introduction to the JAS Mini-Forum “Regarding North Korea”

As Charles Armstrong notes in beginning his review essay that follows, deliberately or not North Korea has been in the headlines. Over the past two decades, and notwithstanding the publication timelines that affect our business, it has rarely been a risk for an academic author to start any piece by stating just that. While the articles that comprise this Journal of Asian Studies “mini-forum” on North Korea had already been commissioned, it will surprise no reader to learn that their framing and urgency shifted in response to recent events. As this issue goes to press, such events have included the November 2010 artillery skirmish centered on Yŏnp'yŏng Island, the choreographed revelation in the same month of Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) uranium enrichment facilities to visiting nuclear scientist Siegfried Hecker, and the March 2010 sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan. All of these incidents—in combination with actions and inactions by South Korea, the United States, and other regional powers—arguably moved the peninsula closer to “the brink” at the end of 2010 than it had been for some time.