Topkapi (Blu-ray Review)
- Review Date: Jan 01, 2025
- Format: Blu-ray Disc
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Director
Jules DassinRelease Date(s)
1964 (November 12, 2024)Studio(s)
Filmways/United Artists (Kino Lorber Studio Classics)- Film/Program Grade: A-
- Video Grade: A
- Audio Grade: A
- Extras Grade: B-
Review
In 1964 when Jules Dassin’s Topkapi was brand-new, audiences were dazzled by its exoticness: its sophisticated screenplay both funny and suspenseful, its beguiling cast of non-Hollywood stars, its far-flung locations (Turkey and Greece). The James Bond film From Russia with Love, released the previous year, was likewise set in Istanbul, but Topkapi uses the location far better; much of the 007 film was shot in Pinewood Studios’ backlot. Its type of heist thriller, which Dassin virtually invented with Rififi in 1955, hadn’t yet been done to death and thus was full of surprises. The huge success of both films led to a glut of such films (e.g., Grand Slam) and directly inspired the original Mission: Impossible TV series. Indeed, a key part of the heist was reworked for the first of the Tom Cruise movies.
As such Topkapi has lost a lot of the freshness 1964 audiences then experienced, but remains a pretty dazzling film, still. I hadn’t seen it since an early-1990s LaserDisc, and Kino’s Blu-ray, a new 4K restoration by current owner MGM, is almost a revelation. My distant memory of the LaserDisc was that, visually, it was rather bland, but the new Blu-ray really pops with primary color, it’s razor-sharp, and Dassin’s almost expressionistic use of sets at times really comes off well. Even the color timing, something one tends to notice only when it’s done badly, is exceptionally good.
First released to Blu-ray by Kino in 2014, its only extra feature then being a trailer, this new special edition offers this new remaster, while adding a new commentary track.
Professional thieves (and ex-lovers) Elizabeth Lipp (Melina Mercouri), a Greek, and Walter Harper (Maximilian Schell), a Swiss, team up for a plan to steal the emerald-encrusted dagger of Sultan Mahmud I, displayed under tight security at the Topkapi Museum in Istanbul. Harper insists that the rest of his team be amateurs (to make a post-heist search for them more difficult), and soon recruits toymaker Cedric Page (Robert Morley), a mechanical genius; Giulio (Gilles Ségal), a “human fly” and mute acrobat; and, for muscle, burly Hans (Jess Hahn).
Wanting to smuggle guns and explosives into Turkey as part of their plan, they hire small-time hustler Arthur Simpson (Peter Ustinov) to drive their big convertible across the border, but Turkish customs officials find the contraband and force Simpson to turn informer against what they mistake for a terrorist assassination plot. When Hans’s hands are injured in a brawl with the party’s drunken cook (Akim Tamiroff), Harper and Lipp reluctantly enlist Simpson to replace him.
Connecticut-born Dassin (1911-2008) had a rollercoaster of a career, starting out in the theater and radio before landing in Hollywood in 1940, though he remained active in the theater simultaneously. He directed a number of interesting films, but his career really took off with a string of remarkable film noir in the late ‘40s: Brute Force, The Naked City (which all but invented the modern police procedural), Thieves’ Highway, and (in Britain) Night and the City. During production of that last film, Dassin was effectively blacklisted.
His next film, the made-in-France Rififi, defined the heist film for the next half-century. He followed that with the interesting He Who Must Die, but that was overshadowed by another huge international success, Never on Sunday, which starred his future wife, the Greek actress Mercouri. Later he wrote-produced-directed the astonishing Uptight (1968), a reworking of John Ford’s The Informer, but set in an African-American section of Cleveland following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. It’s another great if little-seen Dassin film, as far removed from Topkapi as can be imagined.
Dassin was enamored of Mercouri, so much so that it sometimes clouded his filmmaking judgment. A heavy smoker (she died of lung cancer), Mercouri, 44 years old during the time of Topkapi, had lost some of sexy sultriness that made her a star in Never on Sunday, and here she has a deep, croaky voice akin to Lucille Ball on her later sitcoms. Her committed performance, however, almost sells the audience the notion that she’s every man’s dream gal.
Ustinov won an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor playing Simpson, but that’s a bit of a cheat. Eric Ambler’s The Light of Day, the 1962 novel from which Topkapi is based, is told from Simpson’s perspective; he’s the protagonist. Though Schell’s the heist’s mastermind, and Mercouri’s role is greatly expanded from the book, Ustinov’s Simpson is really the main character. A distant cousin to his groveling slave-trader in Spartacus, Ustinov is a delight.
Topkapi’s tone is light and humorous, reflecting the beginnings of a stylization of irreverence in European (and later Hollywood) cinema that would soon become overblown and tedious in movies like Casino Royale and myriad others. This is most apparent in the film’s coda, set in snowy Moscow but using stylized studio interiors no more “realistic” than the Land of Oz in MGM’s 1939 classic. Likewise, an early scene where Lipp and Harper meet up, on a fog-enshrouded Champs-Élysées, it’s obviously a studio set using forced-perspective, yet it’s in keeping with the film’s effervescent, quality—a lighthearted entertainment with the nutritional value of marzipan.
As detailed above, Kino’s Blu-ray of Topkapi, presented in its original 1.66:1 widescreen format, looks so good, only a 4K release could top it. The DTS-HD Master Audio (2.0 mono) is also strong, supported by optional English subtitles. The disc is Region “A” encoded.
Beyond the previously released trailer, the only extra is a new audio commentary track by writer Julie Kirgo and filmmaker Peter Hankoff.
Topkapi may have lost a lot of its originality through years of imitations, inspired by this and Dassin’s earlier Rififi, but the picture is still marvelously entertaining, and thanks to the new remastering, it’s never looked better.
- Stuart Galbraith IV