Fridays With Hitchcock: Topaz (1969)
Screenplay by Samuel Taylor based on the novel by Leon Uris
The worst of Hitchcock's two cold war movies made in the mid-60s, this film was based on a big best selling beach read by Leon Uris - one of those ripped from the headlines things about the secret shenanigans behind the Cuban missile crisis, filled with as much intrigue between the sheets as behind the doors of the embassies... and a cast of thousands. And the major problem is probably with the source material's scope. There is no lead character - so most of the scenes are minor characters we haven't really gotten to know. Screenplay is by Sam Taylor who wrote VERTIGO, and his skill set may not have been able to tame this all- over-the-place novel. The film just isn't very good...
Experiment: A big one! The film actually has four plots - and each is like its own little story. This film paved the way for movies like PULP FICTION. Different lead characters in each story with some overlapping characters who show up in more than one story, and one character who connects all four.
In Denmark: A top ranking Russian and his family defect to the USA.
In the USA: While the Cuban delegation is in town, secret documents are photographed that hint at Russian missiles sent to Cuba.
In CUBA: Spies find the Russian missiles.
In FRANCE: A high level spy ring in the French government is exposed.
Wow, that seems linear and not nearly as complicated as the movie is.
Nutshell: In the USA segment, an American CIA agent (John Forsythe) wants to bribe the secretary (Donald Randolph) to Castro's right hand man (John Vernon) to steal his papers.... but doesn't want it traced back to the USA, so he goes to his pal in the French espionage pal (Frederick Stafford) who is having problems with his wife (Dany Robin) to get his son-in-law (Claude Jade) to provide a sketch of the secretary so that his agent (the late great Roscoe Lee Brown) whose cover is a florist, can pretend to be a reporter for Ebony Magazine in order to get past security and bribe the secretary so that he can photograph the papers. Oh, and Castro's right hand man has a head of security and the florist has an assistant and the son-in-law is obviously married to the French espionage pal's daughter and... well, there are no shortage of characters in this one segment alone! And the character who does the actual spying stuff is Roscoe Lee Brown - a peripheral character who we will never see again.
That's the big problem with the story - in the Cuba section it's not any of our main characters who sneak onto the military base to photograph the missiles, it's some characters we've never seen before who are only in this once sequence... so when they are in trouble, we don't care. They are disposable characters... and *all* of the characters in this film are disposable - they do their little bit of the story and then we never see them again.
It's like a movie about the extras instead of stars.... and there are no movie stars in the film. Zilch. The closest we have to a lead character is the French espionage guy - but he never goes on any dangerous missions himself - he hires someone else. Which means he ends up with soap opera plots - his marriage is in trouble, he's having an affair with an agent, his wife is having an affair with a guy who ends up being a Russian spy, his daughter and son in law have issues... All kinds of silly things that make for a great beach read, but don't work very well on the big screen.
Hitch Appearance: A nurse pushes him through the airport in a wheelchair... then he stands up and walks away.
Great Scenes: Here's where the film really dies - even the worst Hitchcock film usually has a couple of great sequences... but here we get nada.
In the Denmark sequence the Russian defector's adult daughter is hit by a bicycle as she is running to the car... but it's no big deal. A little suspense generated, but it’s over in a blink.
There is a chase with Roscoe Lee Brown, but it's not very exciting. It’s emotionless action, and part of that might be that we don’t really think of Browne as anything more than a pawn in the story... that story experiment biting the film in the butt.
Also a chase in Cuba with the agents... and they are captured because the woman is bleeding. Not a big scene. Hitchcock talked about using blood as a trail of “bread crumbs” for bad guys in an interview about another film, but here it’s not really used here. Still a great idea, and I’ve used it (complete with a fake out trail to throw the pursuers off the trail) in a film. Here it seems like more of an excuse for capture - the agents notice the bleeding and slap the cuffs on her.
Because this film is mostly a talk-fest, there are a couple of places where Hitchcock does a conversation from a distance so that we can't hear what is said - and those are only slightly interesting.
The best thing in the film is probably the *seamless* integration of actors into a real Castro speech. It shows the power of editing to make you believe things that never happened. But this sort of trick may make the film seem “real” but doesn’t make it engaging and interesting and involving. We are not pulled into the story.
The whole film is kind of ho-hum. There was originally a different ending - a scene where one of the protagonist characters and the double agent have a duel to the death in a sports arena... but audiences laughed at test screenings and Hitchcock had to change it to an off camera suicide. This film shows the problem with doing experiments in a script and film - most experiments fail. That’s why we call them experiments. Even though some of the experiments in Hitchcock’s films don’t entirely succeed, they usually have a handful of great scenes, or the experiment itself is interesting to watch (like in ROPE). Here we discover the importance of having a protagonist who is involved in the entire story - *the* pivotal character in each segment. He learn this because this experiment fails - four stories with four different protagonists squeezed into a 127 minute film doesn’t give us much time to care about any of these people or get to know them... so they remain chess pieces moved around the board to tell the story. The more you split the focus among different protagonists, the more you split our emotions so that we don’t have time to care.
On a special note - Karin Dor who plays the Cuban war hero's widow who is secretly a French agent for Stafford who is also his mistress *and* Vernon's mistress, is not only really good and totally hot - she's also the evil SPECTRE agent who almost kills Bond with an airplane in YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE. She gives a great performance in her few minutes on screen. Also, an impossibly young Philippe Noiret does well in his couple of minutes as a French double agent in the France segment. Basically, though - this film is a mess.
- Bill
The worst of Hitchcock's two cold war movies made in the mid-60s, this film was based on a big best selling beach read by Leon Uris - one of those ripped from the headlines things about the secret shenanigans behind the Cuban missile crisis, filled with as much intrigue between the sheets as behind the doors of the embassies... and a cast of thousands. And the major problem is probably with the source material's scope. There is no lead character - so most of the scenes are minor characters we haven't really gotten to know. Screenplay is by Sam Taylor who wrote VERTIGO, and his skill set may not have been able to tame this all- over-the-place novel. The film just isn't very good...
Experiment: A big one! The film actually has four plots - and each is like its own little story. This film paved the way for movies like PULP FICTION. Different lead characters in each story with some overlapping characters who show up in more than one story, and one character who connects all four.
In Denmark: A top ranking Russian and his family defect to the USA.
In the USA: While the Cuban delegation is in town, secret documents are photographed that hint at Russian missiles sent to Cuba.
In CUBA: Spies find the Russian missiles.
In FRANCE: A high level spy ring in the French government is exposed.
Wow, that seems linear and not nearly as complicated as the movie is.
Nutshell: In the USA segment, an American CIA agent (John Forsythe) wants to bribe the secretary (Donald Randolph) to Castro's right hand man (John Vernon) to steal his papers.... but doesn't want it traced back to the USA, so he goes to his pal in the French espionage pal (Frederick Stafford) who is having problems with his wife (Dany Robin) to get his son-in-law (Claude Jade) to provide a sketch of the secretary so that his agent (the late great Roscoe Lee Brown) whose cover is a florist, can pretend to be a reporter for Ebony Magazine in order to get past security and bribe the secretary so that he can photograph the papers. Oh, and Castro's right hand man has a head of security and the florist has an assistant and the son-in-law is obviously married to the French espionage pal's daughter and... well, there are no shortage of characters in this one segment alone! And the character who does the actual spying stuff is Roscoe Lee Brown - a peripheral character who we will never see again.
That's the big problem with the story - in the Cuba section it's not any of our main characters who sneak onto the military base to photograph the missiles, it's some characters we've never seen before who are only in this once sequence... so when they are in trouble, we don't care. They are disposable characters... and *all* of the characters in this film are disposable - they do their little bit of the story and then we never see them again.
It's like a movie about the extras instead of stars.... and there are no movie stars in the film. Zilch. The closest we have to a lead character is the French espionage guy - but he never goes on any dangerous missions himself - he hires someone else. Which means he ends up with soap opera plots - his marriage is in trouble, he's having an affair with an agent, his wife is having an affair with a guy who ends up being a Russian spy, his daughter and son in law have issues... All kinds of silly things that make for a great beach read, but don't work very well on the big screen.
Hitch Appearance: A nurse pushes him through the airport in a wheelchair... then he stands up and walks away.
Great Scenes: Here's where the film really dies - even the worst Hitchcock film usually has a couple of great sequences... but here we get nada.
In the Denmark sequence the Russian defector's adult daughter is hit by a bicycle as she is running to the car... but it's no big deal. A little suspense generated, but it’s over in a blink.
There is a chase with Roscoe Lee Brown, but it's not very exciting. It’s emotionless action, and part of that might be that we don’t really think of Browne as anything more than a pawn in the story... that story experiment biting the film in the butt.
Also a chase in Cuba with the agents... and they are captured because the woman is bleeding. Not a big scene. Hitchcock talked about using blood as a trail of “bread crumbs” for bad guys in an interview about another film, but here it’s not really used here. Still a great idea, and I’ve used it (complete with a fake out trail to throw the pursuers off the trail) in a film. Here it seems like more of an excuse for capture - the agents notice the bleeding and slap the cuffs on her.
Because this film is mostly a talk-fest, there are a couple of places where Hitchcock does a conversation from a distance so that we can't hear what is said - and those are only slightly interesting.
The best thing in the film is probably the *seamless* integration of actors into a real Castro speech. It shows the power of editing to make you believe things that never happened. But this sort of trick may make the film seem “real” but doesn’t make it engaging and interesting and involving. We are not pulled into the story.
The whole film is kind of ho-hum. There was originally a different ending - a scene where one of the protagonist characters and the double agent have a duel to the death in a sports arena... but audiences laughed at test screenings and Hitchcock had to change it to an off camera suicide. This film shows the problem with doing experiments in a script and film - most experiments fail. That’s why we call them experiments. Even though some of the experiments in Hitchcock’s films don’t entirely succeed, they usually have a handful of great scenes, or the experiment itself is interesting to watch (like in ROPE). Here we discover the importance of having a protagonist who is involved in the entire story - *the* pivotal character in each segment. He learn this because this experiment fails - four stories with four different protagonists squeezed into a 127 minute film doesn’t give us much time to care about any of these people or get to know them... so they remain chess pieces moved around the board to tell the story. The more you split the focus among different protagonists, the more you split our emotions so that we don’t have time to care.
On a special note - Karin Dor who plays the Cuban war hero's widow who is secretly a French agent for Stafford who is also his mistress *and* Vernon's mistress, is not only really good and totally hot - she's also the evil SPECTRE agent who almost kills Bond with an airplane in YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE. She gives a great performance in her few minutes on screen. Also, an impossibly young Philippe Noiret does well in his couple of minutes as a French double agent in the France segment. Basically, though - this film is a mess.
- Bill
Labels: hitchcock, multiple stories - Pulp Fiction
posted by wcmartell at 8:44 AM
2 Comments:
I'm dying to buy your book but I don't want to pay $200 for it. Any chance you are going to finish the new one soon?
Well this is completely off topic but I'm hoping you can help me out:
I read a post from 2007 about your "set-crashing"
I'm hoping i can do that in NZ on the set of the Hobbit - if I can't get a job with the company
is that entirely realistic? - is there any advice you could give me?
thanks so much
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