Topaz

Topaz (1969) is one of Alfred Hitchcock's most-maligned films, a dry, slow, "realistic" Cold War spy caper with a non-star cast. Some of the criticisms are fair - it's long, slow-paced, and unfocused, with a wooden plank of a lead in Frederick Stafford - but it's far from the bad, boring film its reputation suggests. Its brilliant scenes come in spurts, but parts of Topaz are Hitchcock at or near his best. If nothing else, it's miles better than the interminable, dull-as-dirt Torn Curtain.

In 1962, with the Cuban Missile Crisis heating up, KGB Chief Boris Kusenov (Per-Axel Arosenius) defects to America. French intelligence Agent Andre Devereaux (Frederick Stafford) is approached by CIA Chief Michael Nordstrom (John Forsythe) to investigate Kusenov's information of Russian missiles in Cuba. Devereaux uses his Cuban spy ring, including lover Juanita De Cordoba (Karin Dors), to gain information, only to run afoul of Rico Para (John Vernon), Castro's vicious right-hand man - and Juanita's paramour. Devereaux also uncovers the existence of Topaz, a ring of KGB spies operating out of Paris, and tries to smoke out the culprits - including several of his high-ranking colleagues.

Topaz's biggest problem is that it seems like two movies in one. The two main plot threads - Devereaux's work in Cuba, and the unravelling of the Paris spy ring - are loosely connected at best, and both halves seem strangely underdeveloped. The Cuba scenes are fleshed out with the Deverauex-Para-Juanita triangle, which plays as a retread of Notorious, and some liberally-used stock footage of Castro and Che Guevara. Throw in a trite subplot about Devereaux's family troubles, and Topaz is all over the place, with too many characters to follow, and too many plot threads left hanging. To be fair, the movie is never boring, but at the same time so much is going on that the story doesn't properly come together. The ending is a bizarrely unsatisfying non-climax - and yet it's the best of the three filmed endings.

Despite his supposed disinterest in the project, Hitchcock does a fine job directorally, and the movie excells at individual set-pieces, some of which rank among Hitchcock's best. The most famous is Para's murder of Juanita, with her purple dress spreading out beneath her like a pool of blood. Hitchcock makes brilliant use of silence in a number of scenes, from the tense escape of the defectors at the film's onset, to Philippe's (Roscoe Lee Browne) infiltration of a Cuban-occupied hotel, to the ingenious way a pair of Cuban spies are unmasked, and the disturbing post-torture scene. Jack Hildyard's striking photography and Maurice Jarre's low-key score certainly help matters, though Samuel Taylor's script is clunky and overloaded with exposition. Even if the underlying story is subpar, the movie is worth watching for these individual scenes.

Frederick Stafford, an unknown Austrian actor, is a handsome dud, giving a thoroughly wooden and stiff performance. John Forsythe (The Trouble With Harry) is equally one-note, while the beautiful Diane Dors (You Only Live Twice) is left hanging with a half-developed character. Dany Robin and Claude Jade go through the motions as Andre's estranged wife and daughter. The most interesting performances are in the corners: John Vernon's (Animal House) fearsome strongman, Philippe Noiret (Cinema Paradiso) and Michel Piccoli's (Belle du Jour) French spies, Roscoe Lee Browne's (The Cowboys) Harlem florist and Per-Axel Arosenius's obnoxious defector.

Topaz is a mess, but it's at least an entertaining one. There's a germ of a good idea or two here, and some excellent individual scenes; it's too bad that it doesn't quite come together into a great film. Ultimately Topaz is one of those films that's more interesting than good.