Word: hitchcocks
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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TOPAZ. Alfred Hitchcock's newest film is hardly his most entertaining or suspenseful work, but still it stands as a monument to the vision, brilliance and sheer force of America's greatest working director. Hitchcock's visual narrative and moral stance dominate the picture from first shot to last-so much so, that one is oblivious to plot inanities inherited from the Leon Uris novel and the largely clodlike performances of the cast (Michacl Piccoli, Philippe Noirct and Rocoe Lee Browne excluded...
...movie revolves around the Cuban missile crisis and the espionage intrigues that went on behind the headlines. While the heroes are pro-American and the villains pro-Russian, Hitchcock looks down his nose at all of them. The hero, for instance, sacrifices his wife, lover and (almost) his son-in-law to obtain information for the American government...
Throughout, Topaz is resolutely anti-political. The finale, when shots of all the dead heroes and villains are superimposed on a newspaper bearing the headline "Cuban Missile Crisis Over" ends with that newspaper being discarded on a park bench. In other words. Hitchcock says "so what?" to the entire enterprise. (The film is amusing in that...
STOLEN KISSES. Francois Truffaut takes time out from paying homage to Hitchcock ( The Bride Wore Black and his most recent film, yet to be released in this country, The Mississippi Mermaid) to provide a deceptively simple piece about unfulfilled love that is as fine as any movie he has made to date...
...picture is witty (particularly in its cinematic references to Hitchcock's Psycho ), suspenseful, and edited to absolute perfection. It is cleaner filmmaking than Les Biches, and, for that reason, is probably less interesting. (Nor is the relationship of the characters as intriguing as that of the earlier film...