Topkapi (1964)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Simply Perfect

Really Surprised!

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Based on the 1962 novel "The Light of Day" by Eric Ambler, this is a mostly ineffectual heist film. The script by Monja Danischewsky is pretty mediocre and seldom as funny as it thinks it is. Jules Dassin's direction is not much better but there are some nice shots here and there and he makes good use of the locations. It is too competent to be awful. The plot concerns an attempt to steal a dagger encrusted with four priceless emeralds, which once belonged to the Ottoman Sultan Mahmud I, from the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul. As ideas for heist films go, this is a belter and it is part of what attracted me to the film in the first place. However, as with the heist itself, it is all in the execution and the execution was sorely lacking. That said, it does have one major saving grace.The film stars the superlative Peter Ustinov in a wonderful performance as Arthur Simon Simpson, a small-time English swindler who operates out of the Greek port city Kavala where he attempts to sell cheap tat to tourists. He is recruited by a gang of thieves to drive a car filled with explosives, guns and other materiel which police forces tend to frown upon across the Turkish border. However, said materiel is discovered by the Turkish customs when the car is searched. After Arthur convinces the police that he is not part of the presumed assassination plot, he becomes an informer and the plotters are forced to accept his presence due to a police's claim that only the person who drove the car or the owner - the fictional Mr. Plimpton - are legally permitted to drive it. Arthur, who is not the brightest spark, lets this slip and is recruited yet again, this time as an active participant in the plot to steal the dagger. Ustinov effortlessly steals the show, which sadly was not worth nearly as much as four emeralds, as Arthur and all of the best bits of the film belong to him. In fact, I have never seen Ustinov in a film in which he had more than one scene where this was not the case. Arthur is a very sympathetic and likable character who claims that his father once described him as "a carbuncle on the behind of humanity," which is the best line in the film. As Arthur, Ustinov won his second and final Best Supporting Actor Oscar, the first being for "Spartacus", but really it should have been the Best Actor Oscar since he is the male lead.A major and almost fatal flaw in the film is the casting of the horrendous actress Melina Mercouri as Elizabeth Lipp, a brilliant career criminal / nymphomaniac and the mastermind behind the heist. She fails to deliver a single line in what even approaches a remotely convincing fashion and there are at least a dozen actresses that I would have preferred to have seen in the role. Sophia Loren is the first name that springs to mind. However, that was never on the cards as Mercouri just so happened to be the director's then girlfriend and future wife. Ah, nepotism. I have nothing against it when it works well and the relatives in question have something resembling talent but this is a particularly unsuccessful example. Her scenes with Ustinov should have been hilarious but they were no more than tolerable. They would not have even been that if a lesser actor had been cast as Arthur. While Ustinov's acting was a breath of fresh air, hers was a gust of ill-wind. Their scenes together are like the agony and the ecstasy. She was the agony. Amazingly, she was not nominated for an Oscar. The scenes in which they recorded her laughter on the toy parrot were a little weird, particularly the one in her boudoir, and I began to wonder if this scene was made more for Dassin's private consumption than anything else. Mercouri later left acting - I can't imagine why - and entered Greek politics, most notably serving as the Minister for Culture on two occasions. For the sake of the country's artistic endeavours, I hope that this was a bit better at that than she was at acting. She could hardly have been much worse, to be fair.Maximilian Schell is an excellent actor in any language and he is certainly suave but I couldn't shake the feeling that he was miscast as the Swiss master criminal Walter Harper. His performance is good but it's not one of his best. Harper is Lipp's ex-lover and they have several would-be romantic / sexy scenes between them but they have no chemistry. However, this is more the fault of the director's talentless girlfriend...I mean, the female lead. In stark, stark, stark contrast to her, Robert Morley is a wonderful actor and he was perfectly cast as the eccentric toymaker Cedric Page. He is the strongest cast member after Ustinov. Akim Tamiroff has a very funny supporting role as the alcoholic cook Gerven but none of the other actors really stood out, good, bad or indifferent. Overall, this is not a very good film at all. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in the stars...except for Melina Mercouri.

It's been many decades since Topkapi or the wonder of Peter O'Toole and that apogee of chic herself Audrey Hepburn delighted us in How to Steal a Million. These are exceedingly clever movies starring very attractive people wearing seriously good clothes while hanging out in exotic and/or luxurious locations and driving autos as erotic as the white Lincoln suicide-door convertible in Topkapi or Peter O'T.'s mint XKE sportster. Hey, life was good! Not only that, the dialogue was witty and multi-leveled. I'd forgotten the homoerotic subtext in Topkapi, made pretty damn explicit in the Turkish Wrestler sequence, which is not even remotely gay, but definitely hot, and a hoot, to boot! Observe Melina Mercouri struggle to contain herself watching the big oiled-up dudes in leather pants writhe about as the Turkish secret police are equally preoccupied. We're almost talking NC-17, but happily Topkapi predates that absurdist system. Most contemporary comedies—even the dominant gross-out variety—seem old-maidish by comparison. Both mastermind Maximilian Schell (never more handsome) and the hunky gymnast Gilles Ségal flirt with everybody in sight irrespective of gender. Even the bumbling, Oscar-collecting "schmo" Peter Ustinov gets an ardent male admirer. Nor is there a whiff of homophobia to dampen the mood. It may have been 1964, but these people are way more hip and sophisticated than, say, George Clooney, to cite a typical example from the current talent pool.Gilles Ségal never speaks a word in the English language Topkapi, yet he deftly steers clear of mime's clichés for an eloquent performance. Albeit unknown in the States, he's terrific, yet but one of many pleasures in this classic of the caper genre. The formidable Melina Mercouri usually gets all the attention, and very true: movie stars of the stratospheric Sophia Loren variety have vanished from the cinematic heavens. Still, it's the men who not only pull off the heist, but likewise effortlessly do the heavy lifting that keeps this picture as satisfying as good champagne.Here's a conversational gambit for a phellow philm phreak: How would you cast the remake? What about your choice for a director? I'd say Topkapi is at least as ripe as Ocean's 11 for a revisit. Just don't give Clooney the Maximillian Schell role. For one, he's too old, and for another, it really should be a Euro. How about Nicolas Cazalé? Or Jean Dujardin was brilliant in the OSS-117 spoofs, which hardly anybody saw outside of France or pre-Artist. Then again, Tom Hardy seems like he can do anything, especially a slightly dangerous sexuality.I'm stumped, though on the Melina Mercouri, and my best guess so far is Angelina Jolie. Don't snicker. She was amazing in Salt.

Topkapi (Jules Dassin, 1964) is among the highlights of the '60s caper-comedy boom, which also produced Charade, Gambit, Arabesque and How to Steal a Million. Helmed by Jules Dassin, the French filmmaker behind heist movie blueprint Rififi (with its legendary silent central set-piece - all 20 minutes of it), it's clever, stylistically showy and deliciously tongue-in-cheek. Maximillian Schell is the criminal mastermind who recruits a team of amateurs as he plots to steal a priceless emerald-studded dagger from an Istanbul museum. He's nicking it for Melina Mercouri, his nymphomaniac former lover, whose fondness for men is exceeded only by that passion for jewels. Schell's protegees include alarms expert Robert Morley, strongman Jess Hahn and human fly Gilles Segal, while whimpering, half-Egyptian tour guide Peter Ustinov and drunken servant Akim Tamiroff (one of the great character actors of the Golden Age, whose fans included Orson Welles) also buzz around. Ustinov's an unwilling plant for the cops, who thinks the group are terrorists. Tamiroff comes with the villa where they're staying; he's convinced they're "Russische spies". It takes a little while for the film's disparate pieces to slot into place, and the variety of European accents can be a struggle, but the second half is utterly superb, with a heist sequence that's tense, funny and mirth-inducingly ingenious, and a gem of an ending. Ustinov got an Oscar for his hilarious turn as the incompetent Arthur Simpson, but the whole ensemble does a neat job, and Tamiroff is very amusing as the bitter, suspicious, misguided, constantly slurring would-be informant. Particularly when he starts talking about fish.

This was a good movie except for the awful lead female. For at least 3/4 of the movie we were going "it's a guy in drag". Seriously, even in the 1960s sexy was sexy, but in this trans-gender casting we just couldn't tell. The story is good, maybe even very good, the script is OK, the score good and the cinematography excellent. Some of the more American actors grate but hey!, that's Americans for you. So, overall, this could have been a classic 60's movie. The miscasting of Ms X was a fatal flaw. We're sorry, but it's just not good enough. And it wasn't back then either. Why IMDb needs 10 lines I don't know, after all it's supposed to be a review not a step-by-step analysis of each and every scene in the movie.