The Prize (1963)

Set in Stockholm during the days preceding Nobel Prize ceremonies, a hard drinking and womanizing American writer (Paul Newman), the recipient of the Nobel for literature, suspects that the recipient (Edward G. Robinson) of the Nobel Prize for physics of being an impostor. Soon, he finds himself over his head in kidnapping, murder and international intrigue. Based on the potboiler by Irving Wallace (THE CHAPMAN REPORT) and directed by Mark Robson (PEYTON PLACE), screenwriter Ernest Lehman (who wrote Hitchcock's NORTH BY NORTHWEST) has whipped up a witty and entertaining pseudo Hitchcockian thriller that's superior to several films Hitchcock did around the same time like TORN CURTAIN and TOPAZ. Though the film is overlong (it could have lost about 20 minutes), Robson contrives a tense and vivid race against time peppered along the way with many Hitchcockian touches: the nudist meeting, Newman on the bridge, even the kiss between Elke Sommer and Newman has echoes of the Grant and Bergman kiss from NOTORIOUS. The glorious score is by Jerry Goldsmith. The large international cast includes Diane Baker, Kevin McCarthy, Micheline Presle, Sergio Fantoni, Gerard Oury, Leo G. Carroll, Jacqueline Beer, Anna Lee, Don Dubbins, Virginia Christine, John Qualen, Martine Bartlett and Karl Swenson.