Word: mercouris
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...pulled off the niftiest caper seen on screen since the jewel job he engineered in Rififi. As in Rififi, unfortunately, the rest of the film seems a bit Dassingenuous. The director's jokes are often too laboriously explained, and the camera's adoration of Melina Mercouri, the great love of Dassin's life, is sometimes boring and always embarrassing...
Still, it's fun to watch the mercurial Mercouri play a nympholucrosmaragdomaniac who has similar and excessive reactions to men, money and emeralds. And it's even more fun to watch Ustinov, a semi-Egyptian sphink who asks unseemly riddles ("Wanna buy some feelthy peectures?"), make like a male Mata Hari and look like a two-ton dip of coffee ice cream wearing baggy tweeds. When Ustinov is onscreen, Topkapi is top chop...
...corrupts a trim Belgian violinist, Romy Schneider. Vince Edwards meets Rosanna Schiaffino. Eli Wallach, as a tough sergeant, sweats out an air raid abed with Jeanne Moreau. Hamilton pairs off with Elke Sommer, a free-living German girl whose parents approve of her enterprise. Peppard finds respite with Melina Mercouri, a black market wheeler-dealer. None can compare to the girl next door, of course, but war brings all manner of hardship...
...Baudouin, President Félix Houphouet-Boigny of the Ivory Coast, France's Pierre Mendés-France, Italy's Umberto, the Princesses Brigitta of Sweden and Alexandra of Britain) to plain old actors and artists (Joan Crawford, Maurice Chevalier, Louis Armstrong, Ava Gardner, Melina Mercouri, Lionel Hampton and Pablo Casals...
Final Word. Behind the scenes, designers took final tucks, drew a cautious curtain for a peep at the audience, were sometimes coaxed out to accept compliments, false or otherwise, and a chance at the champagne. "Darling," trilled Actress Melina (Never on Sunday) Mercouri, smashing her way through ranks of lesser spectators to get to Dior's Marc Bohan. "It was magnificent! Fantastic! Extraordinaire!" "No," said Bohan, pale but for the thousand carmine kiss marks on his cheeks, "I was not nervous, just a little worried." Said Mrs. Vreeland: "My dear, how really truly completely MARVELOUS...