Topaz (1969 film)

Topaz
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Alfred Hitchcock
Produced by	Alfred Hitchcock (uncredited)
Screenplay by	Samuel A. Taylor
Based on	Topaz  by Leon Uris
Starring	Frederick Stafford Dany Robin John Vernon Karin Dor Michel Piccoli Philippe Noiret Claude Jade Michel Subor John Forsythe
Music by	Maurice Jarre
Cinematography	Jack Hildyard
Edited by	William H. Ziegler
Production company	Universal Pictures
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Release dates	December 19, 1969 (1969-12-19) (USA)
Running time	127 minutes (theatrical cut) 143 minutes (Extended DVD cut)
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$4 million
Box office	$6 million[1]

Topaz is a 1969 American espionage thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Based on the 1967 Cold War novel Topaz by Leon Uris, the film is about a French intelligence agent who becomes entangled in the Cold War politics of the events leading up to the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, and later the breakup of an international Russian spy ring in France. The story is closely based on the 1962 Sapphire Affair,^[2] which involved the head of French Intelligence SDECE in the United States, and spy Philippe Thyraud de Vosjoli—a friend of Leon Uris^[2]—who played an important role in "helping the U.S. discover the presence of Russian offensive missiles in Cuba".^[2] The film stars Frederick Stafford, Dany Robin, John Vernon, Karin Dor, Michel Piccoli, Philippe Noiret, Claude Jade, Michel Subor and John Forsythe.

Plot

In Copenhagen in 1962, a high-ranking Soviet intelligence officer, Boris Kusenov (Per-Axel Arosenius), defects to the West with his wife and daughter after a chase through the streets to the US embassy. In Washington DC, CIA agent Mike Nordstrom (John Forsythe) debriefs him and learns that Russian ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads are to be placed in Cuba. Needing physical evidence of the missiles, he contacts an old friend, French agent André Devereaux (Frederick Stafford), at his house in Georgetown. Nordstrom discloses Kusenov's name to Devereaux, asking him to bribe Luis Uribe, a member of Cuba's U.N. delegation, to provide photographs of documents confirming the missile bases in Cuba (knowing that Uribe hates the United States and would never cooperate with an American agent). Devereaux decides to accompany his daughter Michèle (Claude Jade) on her honeymoon with journalist François Picard (Michel Subor) as a reason to go to New York City. His wife Nicole (Dany Robin) is worried and tries to dissuade him.

In New York City, Devereaux entrusts a familiar contact, a recently retired French-Haitian agent named Philippe Dubois (Roscoe Lee Browne), with executing the operation. Uribe is the secretary to Cuban official Rico Parra (John Vernon), who is in New York to appear at the United Nations and staying at the Hotel Theresa in Harlem to show solidarity with the African American community, which the Cuban Communists and their Soviet masters frequently propagandize as "the masses". Dubois, taking the identity of a black journalist from Ebony magazine, sneaks into the hotel, which is seething with visitors and surrounded by an enthusiastic mob. He bribes Uribe to take the documents from Parra's office to photograph, but Parra realizes the plans are gone and catches Dubois photographing the documents. While being chased and shot at by Cuban revolutionaries, Dubois purposefully bumps into Devereaux—who was watching events from the other side of the street—and slips the camera into his hand. A Cuban guard helps Devereaux to get up, stares at him, and lets him go. Dubois escapes from his Cuban pursuers, melting into the crowd around the hotel.

Dubois' photos confirm that the Soviets are secretly transporting and placing missiles in Cuba. Devereaux, ignoring his wife's fear and accusations of infidelity, jets off to Cuba to find out more details. He catches up with his mistress, Juanita de Cordoba (Karin Dor), who is a widow to a wealthy "hero of the Revolution". As leader of the local underground resistance network, Juanita works undercover to collect information as Parra's lover. Upon his arrival, Devereaux finds Parra leaving Juanita's mansion, and Parra indicated he was just in New York City, but the visit was routine and uneventful. During a scene of intimacy in the mansion, Devereaux asks Juanita to take photos of the missiles as they are unloaded from Russian boats at the harbor.

Juanita instructs her loyal domestic staff to help take the photos. Carlotta and Pablo Mendoza pose as picnickers on a hill overlooking the harbor and photograph the unloading of Soviet missiles. They are discovered when hungry seagulls descend upon their lunch and give their position away. The two are able to hide the incriminating film in the railing of a bridge. Soon after, Parra's man, during a mass rally and lengthy speech by the "líder máximo", recognizes Devereaux's face from the incident in front of the hotel. Parra, who has heard from the maimed and tortured Carlotta Mendoza that Juanita is their leader, confronts Juanita and, hugging her in his arms, shoots her to save her from being tortured to death. Her dress spreads beneath her collapsing body like a purple bloodstain on the black-and-white pavement tiles.

At the Havana airport, Devereaux is searched thoroughly at the departure gate, but the Cuban authorities are unable to find the carefully hidden microfilms, which provide crucial information for the CIA about Soviet activities in Cuba. When Devereaux arrives back in Washington DC to deliver the microfilm to Nordstrom, he finds his home empty: his wife has left him due to his Cuban love affair and returned to Paris.

At this point, the film changes course as Devereaux is also recalled to Paris, but before he leaves, he is informed by Kusonov (in Nordstrom's protection) about the existence of a Soviet spy organization called "Topaz" within the French intelligence service. He is given the name of one certain member, NATO official Henri Jarré (Philippe Noiret), who leaked documents to the KGB.

When he arrives in Paris, Devereaux attempts to get to the bottom of the leak, while his daughter Michèle wants to reconcile her parents. He invites some of his old friends and colleagues, including Jarré, to a lunch at a fine restaurant under the pretext of helping Devereaux prepare for his inquiry. While Jarré eats, Devereaux tells the others about Topaz in order to provoke some reaction. Jarré answers that all this is a piece of misinformation, since he knows that Kusenov, the Russian official, in fact died a year ago.

Soon after, Jarré begins to panic, and visits the man who is the leader of the spy ring, Jacques Granville (Michel Piccoli), who answers the door in his night gown, "waiting for somebody." Granville tells Jarré that it was a mistake to say that Kusenov was dead, as the Americans will just check and realize that Jarré is lying. As Jarré is leaving Granville's house, Devereaux's wife arrives to meet Granville. As they kiss, we see a photo on a stand of Devereaux, Nicole, and Granville, who were old friends from their days together in the French Resistance.

Devereaux sends his son-in-law, François, to interview and extract information from Jarré. François calls Devereaux from Jarré's home, but the call is cut short. Devereaux and Michèle rush together to Jarré's flat and find him dead, a staged suicide as if Jarré had jumped out of the window; François has disappeared. Devereaux and Michèle return to Nicole's, and a short time later François arrives. After being clubbed and kidnapped, he recovered and managed to escape from his captors' car. He has overheard a phone number and shows a sketch of Jarré. Nicole, who was staring at the window then turns around and tells her family, with tearful eyes, that the phone number is Granville's, so he must be the leader of the Topaz organization. Granville is exposed and then commits suicide (in the USA and French versions) or flees to the Soviet Union (in the British version).

Cast

Production

Screenplay

Alfred Hitchcock first hired Leon Uris to adapt his own novel for the screen. Reportedly, the two differed on aspects of character development, with Hitchcock claiming that Uris hadn't humanised the villains of the story. Uris also did not appreciate Hitchcock's insistence of adding black humour. After a portion of the draft had been written, Uris left the film. Hitchcock attempted to hire Arthur Laurents to complete work on the screenplay, but he refused, leaving an unfinished draft and the shooting schedule rapidly approaching. Ultimately, Samuel A. Taylor, co-writer of Vertigo was hired, but the film began without a completed screenplay. Some scenes were filmed just hours after they had been written.^[3]

Cinematography

Like his previous films Rope and The Trouble with Harry, Hitchcock intended the film to be an experiment for whether colours, predominately red, yellow and white, could be used to reveal and influence the plot. He later admitted that this did not work out.^[3]

Alternate versions and endings

The original cut of the film ended with a duel between André and Jacques in a French football stadium, shot by associate producer Herbert Coleman when Hitchcock had to return to the U.S. for a family emergency. This ending was panned by audiences during test screenings, who also said the film was far too long.

Under pressure from the studio, Hitchcock shot a second ending he actually liked better, with Jacques escaping on an Aeroflot flight to the Soviet Union as André and Nicole board their adjacent Pan Am flight back to the United States. However, this ending apparently confused audiences. Additionally, screenwriter Samuel Taylor objected to the villain escaping unpunished, and there were fears that this ending would offend the French government.^[4]

As a compromise, Hitchcock used existing footage to create a third ending: Granville is exposed and expelled from a NATO meeting, and over a shot of the exterior of his apartment, the sound of a gunshot tells us he commits suicide behind his drawn curtains (since no footage of his doing so existed).^[5]

The film was released with this third ending, and also edited down by nearly 20 minutes, to a final length of 127 minutes. The "airport ending" briefly appeared on UK prints of the film, by mistake, but those prints were soon altered to match the version released elsewhere.^[6]

When American Movie Classics aired the film in the 1990s, it included the alternative endings filmed by Hitchcock that had been kept in the Universal vaults.

The longer 143 minute cut of the film was released for the first time by Universal on DVD in 1999, using the second ending, in which Jacques escapes. All three endings appear as extras on the DVD, together with an "Appreciation" by Leonard Maltin in which Maltin discusses the deleted scenes and alternate endings.

The longer version of the film has been released numerous times on DVD and Blu-ray in the US and many other markets. However some markets, like Germany, Japan and Scandinavia, continue to have the shorter theatrical cut on DVD and Blu-ray.^[7]

Filming locations

Portions of Topaz were filmed on location in Copenhagen, Wiesbaden, West Germany, Paris, New York City, and Washington, D.C.^[8] The remainder of the film was shot at Universal Studios Hollywood and in and around Los Angeles.

Hitchcock cameo

Hitchcock's signature cameo appearance occurs around 34 minutes into the film, at the airport: he is seated in a wheelchair as he is being pushed by a nurse. She stops, and he nonchalantly stands and greets a man, proceeding to walk off screen with him.

Reception

Claude Jade, Michel Subor, and Dany Robin in Topaz

The film was not particularly well-received or successful at the box office. Hitchcock changed the script shortly before the beginning of filming and distributor Universal forced a different ending to the one preferred by Hitchcock.^[9] For Topaz, Hitchcock engaged the 19-year-old French actress Claude Jade from Truffaut's Stolen Kisses. She and Dany Robin, cast as her mother, would provide the glamour in the story. "Claude Jade is a rather quiet young lady," Hitchcock said later, "but I wouldn't guarantee [that] about her behavior in a taxi."

Some critics liked Topaz. New York Times critic Vincent Canby in 1969 wrote of Topaz: "Alfred Hitchcock at his best" and put the film on his Top Ten list for 1969. In 1969, Hitchcock won the Best Director Award for Topaz from the National Board of Review.

Some U.S. critics complained that there was no Hollywood star in the movie—no Bergman, no Grant; the cast did however include renowned international film stars (Jade, Piccoli, Noiret), whose previous successes had been primarily in France. Some attribute Hitchcock's casting choices to the negative experience the director had working with Paul Newman on Torn Curtain; however, Hitchcock is said to have approached Sean Connery (who had worked with Hitchcock in Marnie) for Andre, and Catherine Deneuve for his wife.

Some critics have inferred that Hitchcock was hoping to groom the relatively unknown Frederick Stafford as a star of his own making, similar to Tippi Hedren; however, Stafford remained an unknown in Hollywood, though he had a lengthy career in European films.

The movie earned $3,839,363 in North American rentals in 1970.^[10]

Real-life influences

• The plot is based on the real-life Sapphire Affair of 1962.^[2]
• The film begins with a Russian KGB agent defecting along with his wife and daughter. It was based on that of Anatoliy Golitsyn.
• André Devereaux was based on French agent Philippe Thyraud de Vosjoli of the SDECE.
• "Juanita de Cordoba" is loosely based on Castro's sister Juanita Castro who defected to the U.S.
• The red-haired army captain known as "Hernandez" is based on Manuel Piñeiro.
• Fidel Castro makes an uncredited appearance in the film along with Che Guevara. While in Cuba, Deveraux attends a Castro rally in order to keep up the appearance of his official cover, that of a French trade attaché. The film spliced in actual footage of a real Castro rally of the era to add to the realism, though Castro himself is not heard speaking.
• The French title is L'Étau (English: [bench] vice, stranglehold), to avoid any reference to Topaze, a well-known 1951 French opus by Marcel Pagnol starring Fernandel and Yvette Etiévant. In the French script, the topaz gemstone is replaced by "l'opale" (opal).

See also

• List of American films of 1969

References

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Topaz (1969 film)

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Topaz (1969 film).

• Topaz at the Internet Movie Database
• Topaz at AllMovie
• Topaz at the TCM Movie Database
• Topaz at Rotten Tomatoes