Topaz

Topaz, released in 1969, was Alfred Hitchcock's antepenultimate film, and the signs were showing. Topaz is by no means a bad film, and as with most Hitchcock films has a couple of great set pieces and a few outstanding shots. But it isn't among his best, mostly due to a kind of inertness in the plot, and a lack of star power. Hitchcock always worked with stars, but a bad experience with Paul Newman in Torn Curtain may have turned him off to the new breed of movie star. Instead, the cast is full of actors who were notable in the French New Wave, such as Michel Piccoli, Michel Subor, Philippe Noiret, and Claude Jade.

The film is based on a novel by Leon Uris, and is an espionage drama centered around a real incident--the Cuban missile crisis. A Russian defector is brought into American custody and reveals that there is something going with Russian activity in Cuba. The U.S. agent, John Forsythe, asks his friend, a French spy (Frederick Stafford) to get some information from a Cuban big shot (John Vernon). Stafford enlists Roscoe Lee Browne, a black French agent from Martinique, to do the dirty work.

Stafford realizes that there is a leak among French intelligence, and the defector reveals a ring code-named "Topaz." There are two double agents, and Stafford tries to smoke them out.

Topaz takes place in Cuba, France, Washington, and Harlem. It is like a James Bond film without the action. Instead, Hitchcock uses his tried and true method of sustained suspense. An early scene, in which the defector and his family are followed on their vacation to Denmark by Russian agents is very good, as the master uses silence--the daughter is wandering around a china shop (and yes, there's a statue of a bull in there) while a Lurch-like agent follows her, with no sound. Silence also makes a play on Browne's mission. Hitchcock, who often uses the camera as a voyeur, has two scenes of dialogue played so we can't hear it--and we don't need to. In one of them, Stafford watches from across the street as Browne convinces a Cuban to take a bribe. No dialogue is heard, but the message is clear.

The segment in Cuba is both interesting and a bit nutty. Of course, this was not the era when directors cast Cubans as Cubans. Vernon, who would later memorably play Dean Wormer in Animal House, is the swarthy assistant to Castro, wearing a thick beard and green fatigues. Stafford's contact in Cuba is a beautiful woman (Karin Dor, who is actually German). Hitchcock whips up two great moments here. One, when Vernon learns from a tortured anti-communist agent that Dor is the leader of the resistance against Castro--she whispers it to him, and Hitchcock shows him rising, stunned. Later, a woman will be shot to death while wearing a purple gown. She collapses while the camera is overhead, so her billowing gown looks like a spreading pool of blood.

There are two endings--in the American version, the double agent gets away, and in the English version he commits suicide. Another version, not released, has Stafford and his adversary fighting a duel with pistols, which was rightly attacked viciously by test audiences.

Topaz is a pretty good spy flick, but with Alfred Hitchcock's name on it, it can't help but seem a let-down.