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.
I was considering this, mostly because I like the books of Leon Uris, but ended up passing. Sounds like a good call.
Hitch and Uris had totally different visions for the book and Uris was dropped early on as a screenwriter.
Sorry Hitch, this one’s a dud. And you made a few, Under Capricorn, Stage Fright and Marnie. It might have been a good novel but the film fails in all departments. Apparently he phoned this one in from his office at Universal Studios. Last good film: Frenzy. I consider myself a Hitchcock connoisseur but with Topaz he lost his audience, much like other late works of the masters like John Ford and Howard Hawks. Watch Topaz, if you can get through it, only in consideration of his complete oeuvre. Want to see a forgotten and underrated Hitchcock film? Watch I Confess (1953), one of his most beautiful and symbolic films.
I think I’ve seen every Hitchcock picture except some of the early silent ones. Uris dropped out as a screenwriter early on. I think the only one from the sound era I have yet to see is “Family Plot”. Which I will dutifully watch in its turns. For the amount of pleasure, Hitchcock has given me it’s worth a few duds along the way. Man made at least a film a year for most of his life – the majority of an incredibly high standard.
So glad to see you in my comments again!