Topaz (1969) We offer no rational explanation for watching this yet again......given it's considered one of Alfred Hitchcock's worst films......(even by Hitchcock himself)
We blame it on our 'seasonal derangement' syndrome......our habit of returning to movies during the exact time of year we saw them originally.......(which is why we'll gorge on repeat viewings of the glorious "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" all through the holidays......)
Then again, it's a glowing tribute to Hitchcock's genius and mastery of the filmmaking craft that even his rock-bottom worst film still might seem better than other directors' best efforts....
'Topaz', along with his similarly inert, stillborn film, 1966's 'Torn Curtain' found the director trapped in a sad, weird situation with his studio, Universal.
While the studio basked in the prestige of having such an iconic director in their stable, after the failure of "Marnie", they began to bully Hitchcock like nursing home attendants caring for an elderly resident afflicted with dementia.
And Hitchcock, a self admitted, profoundly timid man, allowed Universal to bend him to their will......resulting in 'Topaz' which looked even more dreary, sedentary and devoid of imagination than 'Torn Curtain'..
(These were the same studio lizards who specifically forbade the director from ever making his long held dream project, the strange, ethereal J.M.Barrie ghostly romance "Mary Rose" -see our 09/17/2018 post on the novelized version)
Taken from a doorstop Leon Uris bestseller that fictionalized events leading up to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, 'Topaz' lays out a lumpy unconvincing mixture of bland U.S. Intelligence operatives, equally dull French spies, thuggish, menacing Cuban revolutionaries and a few tepid illicit romances thrown in.
You can tell early on that none of these elements engaged Hitchcock's creativity and sense of wicked fun and the movie looks and sounds like a slapped together TV episode moving in slow motion. You can almost picture the director fast asleep in his canvas chair while the the actors carried on their mediocre work.
Whenever faced with a dud film like this, we struggle to look for the positives.......and believe it or not, we found them in some of the excellent actors scattered among the cast....
These worthies include.....Per-Axel Arosenius as a cranky, acerbic Russian defector, confounding his CIA rescuers with his general disdain for his deliverance from the Iron Curtain......Roscoe Lee Browne as Harlem florist and part-time spy who daringly penetrates a nest of visiting Cuban to steal secrets.....John Vernon as a formidable Cuban Fidelista.....and last, but certainly not least, the luminous raven-haired Euro-Babe Karin Dor as a much beloved Cuban revolution widow and secret leader of the resistance against the Castro regime.
We've nothing to say about the bunch of famous French actors in the film.......we won't even mention their names since they all appear bored and barely there.
What Hitchcock needed desperately to pull this cast and story together was a charismatic actor for the lead role of Andre Devereaux, the French spymaster romancing Karin Dor's character while trying to uncover which of his own countryman who's sold out to the Russians. (At one point, Sean Connery was considered)
What the movie got was the completely unexciting, uninteresting and cardboard stiff Frederick Stafford, a chiseled male model type who'd already cavorted as a faux-007 in a couple of those "OSS-117" Bond knock-offs....(see our posts on those beauties on 2/4/2018).
Stafford wanders through the movie like he's posing for a menswear magazine ad and the one and only thing he excels at is sucking the energy out of every scene he's in.......it's as if in casting him, Hitchcock was already resigned to making this movie a lost cause.
But we'd be remiss if we didn't credit 'Topaz' for at least one indelible Hitchcock 'moment'......you'll know it when you see it since it involves the startlingly engineered camera shot of a major character's death. And sadly, those few seconds account for the only thing that anyone remembers about the film.
The good news for Hitchcock came 3 years later in 1972 when he journeyed back to England to make his R-rated serial strangler thriller "Frenzy"......where at long last he found a place and material that rekindled and re-energized his creative juices.
As for Topaz.......it's 2 stars (**) as best (as a Hitch fan, we're being incredibly generous).......and we're not likely to re-visit it again......
Until maybe this time nest year.....(that damn Seasonal Derangement Syndrome......)
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