Topaz, director Alfred Hitchcock's 51st movie, released in 1969. It is a Cold War and spy story, adapted from the book of the same name by Leon Uris.
It stars Frederick Stafford, Dany Robin, Claude Jade, Michel Subor, Karin Dor, John Vernon, Michel Piccoli, Philippe Noiret, John Forsythe, Roscoe Lee Browne, and Per-Axel Arosenius.
Plot
When a high-ranking Soviet intelligence officer defects to the West with a story of an agreement between the Russians and Cubans and the existence of a mole within the French intelligence service, CIA agent Nordstrom (John Forsythe) enlists the aid of his friend and French agent André Devereaux (Frederick Stafford), encouraging him to accompany his daughter Michèle (Claude Jade) on her honeymoon with journalist François Picard (Michel Subor) as a premise to get him to New York. André accepts, but his wife Nicole (Dany Robin) is worried for him.
After managing to get hold of some seriously damaging papers from the visiting Cuban official Rico Parra (John Vernon), in New York to appear at the United Nations and staying in Harlem to show solidarity with "the masses", sneakily of course, a concerned Devereaux jets off to Cuba and catches up with his mistress Juanita de Cordoba (Karin Dor), who is now secretly involved with a local underground movement, whilst also being involved in another way with Parra. Parra discovers that she is in the underground from a tortured underground member. Parra confronts Juanita, and shoots her to save her from being tortured to death. In one of the film's most memorable shots Juanita is seen from overhead, her dress spreading out on the floor like a bloodstain (although it is purple not red) as she falls. Devereaux then is recalled to Paris, where he attempts to get to the bottom of the whole leak problem. Michèle wants to reconcile her parents.
Nicole cheats on André (after his Cuban affair) with the man who proves to be the leader of the spy ring, "Topaz", Jacques Granville (Michel Piccoli), their old friend from their days together in the French Resistance. François goes on to find out who "Topaz" is by interrogating NATO official Henri Jarre (Philippe Noiret). A short time late Michèle finds the murdered Jarre. André and Michèle return to Nicole's, where they find that François is missing. A short time later François arrives and shows a drawing of Jarre. Nicole knows him and tells André, that Granville is the head of "Topaz".
In the original ending, there was a duel between André and Jacques in a French soccer 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, and under pressure from the studio, Hitchcock shot an ending he actually liked better, with Jacques escaping on an Aeroflot flight to the Soviet Union. This ending apparently confused audiences, so as a compromise Hitchcock used existing footage to create a new ending in which the double agent commits suicide (since no footage of his doing so existed).[1] Eventually, the studio decided to release different endings in different countries: the suicide in the U.S. and France, the airport ending in England. [2]
Cast
Reaction
The film was not particularly well-received or successful at the box office. Hitchcock changed the script shortly before the beginning of the filming and the distributor Universal forced a different ending to the one preferred by Hitchcock[3]. 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.[citation needed]
Criticism
Some American critics said 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.
Alternate endings
When American Movie Classics aired the film in the 1990s it included alternative endings filmed by Hitchcock, which had been kept in the Universal vaults.[citation needed] The "Masterpiece Collection" DVD released by Universal restores a number of deleted scenes and uses the 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 among other things.
Hitchcock cameo
Hitchcock's signature cameo appearance occurs 32 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.
Real-life influences
- 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 daughter Alina Fernández who fled Cuba and defected to America. Castro disowned her for her treason. This is not the case in the novel and as such is highly questionable.
- 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.
- The French title is L'Étau (English : ~bench vice, ~stranglehold), to avoid any reference to Topaze, a most very well known French opus by Marcel Pagnol (play in 1930, first film version in 1936 with Arnaudy in the title role, second film version in 1951 with Fernandel in the title role). In the French script, the topaz gemstone is even replaced by "l'opale" (opal).
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