In 1969 Roger Ebert had the opportunity to interview Alfred Hitchcock during a promotional tour for Topaz. Ebert commented that the film had not been previewed for critics yet so he could not ask Hitchcock specific questions about the film. Hitchcock replied.
"No matter," he said. "You'll see it soon enough. You'll only like it the second time . . . that's what I think. My pictures become classics, magically, with age. The critics never like them first time around. I remember when 'Psycho' first came out; one of the London critics called it a blot on an honorable career. And Time magazine panned it so badly that I was surprised, a year later, to find them referring to someone else's thriller as being 'in the classic "Psycho" tradition,'
Psycho was not well received by critics, neither was Lifeboat, Marnie, The Trouble With Harry or I Confess. The mainstream press climbed all over itself to supply negative reviews about Vertigo. It is now widely considered one of the best films ever made.
The same can be said for Topaz, Hitchcock's most troublesome film. Based on the best-selling novel by Leon Uris, Topaz is a true-life story about the Cuban missile crisis and a spy ring operating in France that was feeding secret NATO information to the Soviet Union.
Topaz is on of Hitchcock's most ambitious films with the story-taking place in Moscow, Copenhagen, Washington, New York and Paris. The film opens on a military parade in Moscow where we learn a top official in the KGB plans to defect on while on vacation. The story moves to Copenhagen where we observe the family behaving like tourist while KGB agents follow them around. Two great suspenseful set pieces happen in this scene. The dialogue free piece in the china shop, and then later when the family makes a mad dash for freedom outside a Danish department store. Here we meet CIA agent Michael Nordstrom (John Forsythe)
In Washington the KGB officer is debriefed and we learn that he has been privy to vital NATO documents. We also learn that there has been a secret meeting between the Soviet and Cuban delegations at the United Nations. The Cuban security officer is in possession of documents that spell out this arrangement.
Nordstrom convinces Andre Devereaux (Frederick Stafford) a French agent to find a way to view these documents. Devereaux enlists the aid of Phillipe Dubois (Roscoe Lee Brown) a French spy who operates out of a Manhattan florist shop to accompany him to Harlem. In one of the films tensest moments, a classic Hitchcock set piece, Dubois bribes one of the Cubans to borrow the documents so they can be photographed.
Devereaux agrees to assist the Americans further by traveling to Havana to bring back solid evidence of the Soviet missile activity. this is more than his wife Nicole (Dany Robin) can bear. She does not support her husbands spying for the Americans and she knows he has a mistress in Cuba.
Devereaux's mistress is none other than Juanita de Cordoba (Karin Dor) window to one of the hero's of the revolution and secretly the leader of the underground resistance. In the films primary set piece Devereaux and Cordoba work together to spy on the Soviets and then Devereaux must smuggle the information out of Cube under the watchful eye of the head of Cuba's security forces Rico Parra (John Vernon).
At this point the movie is at the 110-minute mark and packs enough suspense and action for any spy thriller. But Hitchcock was not done. Because of his activities on behalf of the Americans Devereaux is recalled to France to explain everything he has done. before he leaves the CIA reveal to him that the Soviet defector has information about a secret group cod-named Topaz. They operate at the highest levels of the French government and at NATO. Devereaux must find a way to expose these traitors before he is forced to reveal all he knows about the Soviet and American activity. he also must reconcile with his wife who has left Washington and returned to Paris, where she has taken up an affair with her old flame and Devereaux's good friend Jacques Granville (Michel Piccoli).
Topaz is Hitchcock's longest movie and it has many flaws. The director has said so himself. To start with the film was not made in Hitchcock's usual style. When making a film Hitchcock would accomplish everything before frame of film was shot. he would plan out every detail, and storyboard every shot and camera angle. he would work with his writer to tighten and streamline the script during these planning sessions. On Topaz Hitchcock had no planning sessions. Leon Uris was hired to adapt his book for the screen and when he presented the script to Hitchcock, Hitchcock hated it and threw the entire thing away. He brought in screenwriter Samuel Taylor (Vertigo, Sabrina) to begin a new draft. Because of the late start date Taylor was writing while the film was shooting.
The film relies on long scenes of exposition dialogue. Hitchcock tried many things to make these interesting, for instance the scene in the florist shop, but he understood that a lot of the film was people standing around talking. In addition, and very troublesome to Hitchcock, they were mostly French and Cuban, but they stood around talking English.
Test screening results for the movie were a disaster. The audiences declared it boring and dull. Many wrote in on their comment cards that this definitely was not a Hitchcock picture. And by unanimous vote they hated the ending. Hitchcock worked with Universal pictures to shorten the film by 25 minutes. In addition he created a new ending, but audiences found the new ending confusing, so using footage he already had he created a third ending that worked, but he never found it satisfactory. Audiences also did not like the fact that there was no major Hollywood stars in the film. With the exception of John Forsythe, the movie was cast with unknowns in the major leads. Even now critics agree that the lack of a recognizable star is a major issue with the film. A star would have brought audiences to see the film, but even more important a familiar face would have helped them follow the narrative more closely. A star would have brought them into the story and helped them identify with the protagonist. It has been widely assumed that after having a miserable experience working with Paul Newman on Torn Curtain Hitchcock decided to avoid using popular actors in his film.
With 25 minutes cut the narrative was even more difficult to follow. The film was a box office failure. Many said that Hitchcock had lost his touch, that his old fashioned style was no match for contemporary films such as Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate. Critics pointed out how much Hitchcock had used studio-processed shots instead of location shooting on Topaz.
Many critics thought that the Cuban Missile crisis was a bad choice for Hitchcock and he was better working with fictional stories rather than current events. These critics have forgotten how deftly he handled the true life story in The Wrong Man or the many topical stories he did in the past including Foreign Correspondent, Saboteur, Lifeboat and Notorious. In fact Topaz was Hitchcock's second film about the cold war. The first was Torn Curtain released in 1967.
Thirty years later Topaz's reputation has changed. The full film has been restored on DVD and at two hours and twenty-three minutes it his Hitchcock's longest film. The restoration includes the second ending, at the airport, which Hitchcock liked the best, because it was the most ambiguous. The movie has an international flavor to it. For 50 years Hitchcock made films that were either overly British or American, but Topaz is distinctly European.
Topaz is now seen as one of his more experimental films. Hitchcock was never interested in the plot of his movies. He viewed the plot the way a painter views a bowl of fruit. It's something to paint, but the style in which the artists paints it, is what matters. For Hitchcock filmmaking was always about style and about experimenting with story telling in new and unique ways. For Topaz he chose to tell the story through color. He paired each of the characters with significant colors and used them to bring about an emotional response from the audience.
The color of Topaz is yellow, so anything associated with the spy ring was associated with the color yellow. In addition since the agents of Topaz were French, they were associated with yellow too. The Russians and communists were red. Red also meant danger. The briefcase containing the secret documents is a red leather briefcase. In addition he used purple. Purple for death. When you watch the film see how vivid the primary colors are from the costumes to the set decorations.
In addition Hitchcock inserted a flower motif. The flowers signifying death and funerals. There are flowers everywhere; from the Danish china shop; to the homes and hotel rooms; to the florist shop where a funeral arrangement is being made. In a significant scene he also turned to birds again to signify chaos and danger.
Topaz is not great Hitchcock, but it is good Hitchcock and that's saying a lot. The film is worth seeing just for the murder scene of one of the primary characters. It's an overhead shot that only Hitchcock could conceive.
At The Movie House rating *** 1/2 stars
Other films of interest:
Torn Curtain
The Mackintosh Man
The Spy Who Came In From The Cold
The Naked Runner
The Ipcress File
Funeral In Berlin
Missiles Of October
Thirteen Days
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