RyothChatty ridiculous rating

Manthast Absolutely amazing

Dotbankey A lot of fun.

SanEat A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

cinemajesty After directing his works of mountain peaks 10 years earlier with "Vertigo" (1958) over "North by Northwest" (1959) to the crowning all independent produced "Psycho" (1960), Alfred Hitchcock overthrew himself with the fast-tracked adaptation of Leon Uris' Spy Game Thriller "Topaz", telling the story of a french spy, who unravels the schemes of the 1962 Cuba Crisis by exposing french governmental bureaucrats exchanging Russian Intel towards atomic missile logistics in the Caribbean triangle.Director Alfred Hitchcock challenged himself with the second after "Torn Curtain" starring Paul Newman in 1966er espionage story, which had been about an American scientist, who defects back and forth to the East and back to East Germany again, carrying a secret formula, which may change the fronts of the emerging cold war. With "Topaz", the director seemingly wanted to make up for an mediocre hardly suspenseful result of "Torn Curtain", which he felt to be a cinematic failure.Nevertheless provided with less budget production then for "Torn Curtain" of just 4 Million U.S. Dollar and no Hollywood Star in the picture to back him up, Alfred Hitchcock encounters the years towards the end of his career existing Universal Studios distribution deal, before he delivers the infamous line over the phone of his Universal Studio office on July 20th 1978 to Hollywood executive Hilton Green, "I can't go on.", concluding his career with a fairly received crime-comedy genre mix "Family Plot" (1976)."Topaz" became a project under pressure towards tight deadlines and against the success of novel. The picture misses the playful ease of Alfred Hitchcock's films as "Shadow of a Doubt" (1943) or "To Catch a Thief" (1955). The director had the clearly over-rushed novel adaptation to a screenplay by Samuel Taylor, under control, but Alfred Hitchcock did not managed to bring the film's action up to a contemporary pace with an already gone spy action movie hype of the 1960s and six over-achieving 007 movies produced and successfully distributed by independent production company Danjaq, LLC between 1962 to 1969.In "Topaz", Alfred Hitchcock resided in rigid structure of wide to close up dolly camera movements as well as inter-cutting, which had been working all through his career to an defining signature that shaped suspense-triggering-films to this day. The editorial as the cinematographic technique works occasionally as in the scene of killing the character of Juanita de Cordoba, played by Karin Dor, through invading Cuban Military, in a high angle shot of capturing beauty on the fading in green-silk wrapped body sliding to the Villa's foyer floor after receiving an up-close and personal gun shot by the haunting character of Rico Parra, portrayed by actor John Vernon.Another momentum of cinematic significance can be witnessed with the too-late introduced characters of french bureaucracy giving faces by actors Michel Piccoli and Philippe Noiret, who both find death after their public exposure of spying for the Russians in one of two after the previously mentioned interior Cuban Villa Scene, where suspense had been all round up by Director Alfred Hitchcock with combining the spoken word with contradicting action beats in a interviewing scene of Noiret's character of Henri Jarre.The third moment of joyful Hitchcockian mastery presents itself in the final scene regarding the character of Jacques Granville, in manner of a professional actor performed role by Michel Piccoli, where a one shot uses the camera on a crane from close-ups to wide and back to the Piccoli's pitch perfect close-up, revealing Jacques Granville's exclusion from society, underlined by an immense baroque conference hall setting.No doubt that these flickering scene of mastery can not prevent "Topaz" to be another failure of a Hollywood movie with an charming but unappealing, if not to say passive leading character of Andre Devereaux, performed by miscast actor Frederick Stafford, which Alfred Hitchcock could not get to one single break-out beat of struggle, despair nor fighting spirit towards the will to survive a life-threatening situation.Realising his battle against windmills with two failing spy movies, Alfred Hitchcock returned to his crime-menacing thriller roots with "Frenzy", which he presented at Cannes Film Festival on May 19th 1972 to another recalling success of a director, who shaped editorial techniques as well as cinematographic movements in 50 years of film-making like no other to create the diligent and unremitting instrument of suspense in cinema for any genre from timeless comedies over classic drama to high-end contemporary action movies.© 2017 Felix Alexander Dausend (Cinemajesty Enterainments LLC)

BA_Harrison After a string of box office hits, director Alfred Hitchcock's career went into something of a decline in the mid-sixties, with disappointing psychological thriller Marnie, followed by mediocre cold war thriller Torn Curtain, about an American defecting to East Germany.So what did Hitch do next? Why, direct another cold war thriller, of course, only this time he made it even less exciting—a 143 minute long, dialogue heavy snooze-fest that once again starts with a defection, a high ranking Russian leaving his homeland for America. Once on US soil, the defector tells his new hosts about his country's involvement in Cuba. Keen to find out more, the US recruit a French intelligence agent to investigate, which ultimately leads to the discovery of a spy ring in the French government.All of this moves at a snail's pace, with very little of Hitchcock's style in evidence, making it a real struggle to get through to the very end. The sad, pathetic whimper of an end.2/10: I've not seen them all, but this must be a contender for the director's worst movie.

Adam Peters (32%) What to say about this film without bad-mouthing one of the greatest film makers of all time? Let me be kind and say that is very much of its time, though if one had any interest in the Cuban missile crisis before watching, then their appetite will be greatly diminished after, not by what one learns but through witnessing one of the least exciting, plodding films old Hitch ever put to film. The script (biggest culprit for films problems) is bland beyond belief and is a total wonder why it ever got picked up in the first place (slim pickings?) with its total lack of any real tension, uninspired dialogue, uninteresting characters or memorable scenes, couple that with some quite poor acting at times and some slightly sloppy editing. It's just so not what we love about the master's best work and probably would now be almost forgotten about if made by another, less well known or less respected director.

SnoopyStyle Russian KGB official Boris Kusenov defects with his family to the States. He is arrogant and gives some partial info to the CIA about Cuba. CIA agent Mike Nordstrom gets his French intelligence agent friend André Devereaux to investigate the Russians' involvement in Cuba. Meanwhile the defector discloses a French spy ring codename Topaz.The defection works great. It is an exciting start to the movie. But I feel that there are a lot of static stationary scenes. It doesn't have enough movement to denote the needed action. On the plus side, there are other things here like the jealous wife of the French agent, and the spy craft minutia. But mostly it's a little bit slow.The fact that the main protagonist agent is French may be a hindrance to this movie. This is not a Bond movie. But it's also not morally ambiguous. Director Alfred Hitchcock has made something in between. It's a French Bond without much of the action. And the ending just fizzles out. It is a fairly average spy movie with some interest Hitchcock-style scenes.