Topaz (1969)

Topaz
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Written by Samuel A. Taylor from the novel by Leon Uris
1969/US
IMDb page
First viewing/Netflix rental

Michele Picard: Oh, the Cubans. I love the Cubans. They are so wild!

Oh, how the mighty have fallen!  Any one in search of the Master’s suspense or style will be sorely disappointed.

The story is set during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.  The plot is quite convoluted.  Any way, a Russian defector tells the CIA about his country’s plans to deploy medium-range ballistic missiles in Cuba.  He also informs CIA agent Michael Nordstrom (John Forsythe) that the USSR has infiltrated French Intelligence and is leaking secret NATO documents to the KGB.  Nordstrom enlists French intelligence agent Andre Devereaux to ferret out the mole.  Devereaux has special insider access at the highest levels of Castro’s regime.  He also has a very troubled home life and is having an affair with a double agent.

A lot of skullduggery and a little romance ensues.  The investigation takes Deveraux to the highest levels of the French Embassy in Washington.  With John Vernon as a revolutionary and Phillippe Noiret and Michel Piccoli as French diplomats.

Poor Hitch got a decent amount of money to make this movie but didn’t attract one single Hollywood star.  Maybe the studio had premonitions of disaster — the film was a box-office flop.

The production seems to have been an unhappy one.  As a spy thriller it is mediocre.  It has just lacks what made Hitchcock great – his style, his mastery of suspense, and his black humor.  The script didn’t do him any favors.  I didn’t care about the characters and even less about the McGuffin mole.  Recommended to Hitchcock completists only – like me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5U1XQH78gwc