This light adaption of Irving Wallace's novel The Prize serves as yet another Hitchcock wannabe production. I'm sure Paul Newman's performance here got him cast later on with Alfred Hitchcock himself in Torn Curtain.
Irving Wallace's Cold War novel was a good deal more dramatic than what we see here, though the plot centers around the serious business of kidnapping. It takes place at Stockholm during the Nobel Prize Awards ceremony. Edward G. Robinson, a defector from behind the Iron Curtain, is to receive the Nobel Prize for physics. But the Russians have other ideas.
Robinson has twin brother who they plan to substitute after they kidnap Robinson. Robinson is to denounce the capitalist warmongers at the ceremony and then go back to Russia. Or both Robinsons will, willingly or unwillingly. Assisting them in their plans is Diane Baker, the daughter of the Commie Robinson and niece of the defector.
One of those small things that usually happen in Hitchcock type films trips up the plans. Before he's kidnapped Robinson has a casual encounter with Paul Newman who is receiving the Nobel Prize for literature. Later on Robinson doesn't seem to remember it at all, or Newman for that matter.
It's probably the writer's curiosity that gets him aroused, but Newman with the help of Swedish Foreign office attaché Elke Sommer starts to unravel the whole dirty scheme.
Newman does fine work here as a Norman Mailer type iconoclastic author, but I'm still wondering why he goes into that Reginald Van Gleason type voice on occasion in the film. I guess working with Jackie Gleason in The Hustler must have had a more profound impact than anyone thought.
There's a nice sidebar plot going with the dual recipients for the Prize for Medicine, Sergio Fantoni and Kevin McCarthy, each of whom thinks they should get sole credit for a discovery. And there's the modern day Curie husband and wife team from France, Gerald Oury and Michelline Presle, who are keeping up appearances, but leading quite separate lives except for work.
The real star of the film however is the Swedish capital city of Stockholm and we get to see many fine shots of it during the course of the story.
The Prize might be too light a treatment for devoted fans of Irving Wallace, but it's all right as a Hitchcock light type of film.
Irving Wallace's Cold War novel was a good deal more dramatic than what we see here, though the plot centers around the serious business of kidnapping. It takes place at Stockholm during the Nobel Prize Awards ceremony. Edward G. Robinson, a defector from behind the Iron Curtain, is to receive the Nobel Prize for physics. But the Russians have other ideas.
Robinson has twin brother who they plan to substitute after they kidnap Robinson. Robinson is to denounce the capitalist warmongers at the ceremony and then go back to Russia. Or both Robinsons will, willingly or unwillingly. Assisting them in their plans is Diane Baker, the daughter of the Commie Robinson and niece of the defector.
One of those small things that usually happen in Hitchcock type films trips up the plans. Before he's kidnapped Robinson has a casual encounter with Paul Newman who is receiving the Nobel Prize for literature. Later on Robinson doesn't seem to remember it at all, or Newman for that matter.
It's probably the writer's curiosity that gets him aroused, but Newman with the help of Swedish Foreign office attaché Elke Sommer starts to unravel the whole dirty scheme.
Newman does fine work here as a Norman Mailer type iconoclastic author, but I'm still wondering why he goes into that Reginald Van Gleason type voice on occasion in the film. I guess working with Jackie Gleason in The Hustler must have had a more profound impact than anyone thought.
There's a nice sidebar plot going with the dual recipients for the Prize for Medicine, Sergio Fantoni and Kevin McCarthy, each of whom thinks they should get sole credit for a discovery. And there's the modern day Curie husband and wife team from France, Gerald Oury and Michelline Presle, who are keeping up appearances, but leading quite separate lives except for work.
The real star of the film however is the Swedish capital city of Stockholm and we get to see many fine shots of it during the course of the story.
The Prize might be too light a treatment for devoted fans of Irving Wallace, but it's all right as a Hitchcock light type of film.