Word: topaz
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...office, Cauthen was winning the first race with a stretch drive on My Dad's Cross. In the second race, he brought a five-year-old mare called Donizetta up from seventh to third. After that, he won the third with Joanne's Fling and the fourth with Sparkling Topaz. Since December, Master Cauthen, who weighs 92 Ibs., has been winning roughly 30% of his mounts. That is not supposed to happen in horse racing, where a 15% winning average is extraordinary. As far as anyone remembers, nothing like it has happened at a major track before...
Frenzy. After a stretch of bombs (Marnie, Topaz, Torn Curtain, it hurts to even list them) Hitchcock came up with this solid, funny, return to the theme which has obsessed him since the beginning of his 53 film career. Blackmail (1929) the first British talkie, dealt with the problem of an innocent man suspected of a murder he, of course, did not commit. Frenzy too, has a nabbed innocent--only by 1973 the crimes shown had grown more lurid and gruesome: rape and strangling (with neckties). Hitchcock seems to be leaning more and more to overt comedy in his second...
...shop in Brooklyn. The numbers of spies who have been caught in Angleton's net run into the dozens. They include George Blake, a senior officer in the British Secret Service; George Paques, a NATO official whose activities were in part the basis of the book and film Topaz; and Heinz Felfe, a high-ranking officer of the West German intelligence service...
...proud of the way I look, because you spend $1,000 a week* to buy my clothes. I go down to Tiffany's, and these rings and things [he is wearing two big gold rings plastered with diamonds, a watch to match and an oversized topaz] just crawl up on my hands." Then it's donation time again, and Ike stresses, "I don't want to hear change rattling; it makes me nervous in the service." The buckets go out, and Ike, waiting only long enough to hear the rustle of the bills, grins and makes...
...case there was any doubt, back in the dim days of Marnie and Topaz, Hitchcock is still in fine form. Frenzy is the dazzling proof. It is not at the level of his greatest work, but it is smooth and shrewd and dexterous, a reminder that anyone who makes a suspense film is still an apprentice to this old master...