BACK IN THE MID '60S, ALFRED Hitchcock came up with a splendid idea: What if he got Vladimir Nabokov to write a script for him? This would constitute an event of historic proportions, seeing that he was the greatest filmmaker on earth and Nabokov was the greatest writer in the universe. The rotund Englishman dispatched a letter to the rotund Russian (who was then living in a hotel in Montreux, Switzerland) which offered two script ideas: the first was about man who sneaks back into Russia for secret agent reasons; the second, about a hotel run by a family who turn out to be secret agents (or crooks). Nabokov eventually wrote back and said that he wasn't too keen on either of Hitchcock's ideas, but offered to write a script about a young man who goes to outer space and returns to earth slightly different, slightly changed, slightly deranged. Nabokov promised a great "denouement." Hitchcock never spoke to Nabokov again.

Hitchcock did, however, make one of the films he proposed to Nabokov. It became Torn Curtain, about a nuclear physicist (Paul Newman) who defects to East Germany (not Russia anymore) and enters a gloomy world policed by even gloomier secret agents. If you haven't seen Torn Curtain and are curious to see the film Nabokov was offered, go to the Egyptian next week, where 13 Hitchcock classics are currently screening. The entire first week was dedicated to Psycho, but this week features not only Torn Curtain but (among others) The Birds, Rope (which stars James Stewart as an existential philosopher!), Frenzy, Shadow of a Doubt, and the great Vertigo--the one feminist film critics just can't get enough of. (After this series, the Egyptian closes for remodeling. They re-open at the end of summer... "with air conditioning!")