Movie review – “Topaz” (1969) **

All that admiration from French critics during the 60s must have made adapting Leon Uris’ best seller a great idea. It’s not a bad story, although it has a major problem: it’s basically two films, one about shenanigans in Cuba, the other about a French traitor. This isn’t brought up at all the Leonard Maltin-hosted documentary about the film (a special feature on the DVD) as a reason for the under-performance at the box office. (Ninety minutes in and we meet all these new characters.) 

Maltin also claims that Stafford is a good actor – he’s dreadful, the most stiff, awkward leading man in Hitchcock’s career – was on Earth possessed Hitch to cast him? He makes you long for John Gavin.

The other lead Frenchies aren’t much chop either – Dany Robin is a major drag as Stafford’s wife, and Claude Jade does nothing as his daughter. (She doesn’t even look that beautiful – you could have cut her out of the whole film). 

However, the supporting French cast is excellent, especially Philippe Noiret. John Forsythe is strong in as the American and there is superb work from Karin Dor as a tragic Cuban (sexy, sad and sympathetic) and John Vernon as a Castro henchmen (ruthless, intelligent, in love). These two give the film it’s best emotional moments – torturing the help, Vernon shooting Dor. There are some other effective bits too where Hitchcock wakes up – the initial defection, Roscoe Lee Browne (also good) doing some spying. But then it bogs down in that last bit with all those French people we don’t particularly care about. See the cut version if you can. The duel finale looks absolutely ridiculous.