User Reviews

Okay, it had some nice travel-porn and Peter Ustinov absolutely transcends the material here (he was the best thing in this)...but this flick is screaming out for a glamorous remake. Nothing too slick and I don't want everyone in the remake to be gorgeous but seriously...it needs a remake. Also, my husband came up with a much better ending than the one here.

So...nice scenery, including a ridiculously good-looking Max Schell, but Ms. Mercouri nearly ruined this movie. She was just too weird. Was she supposed to be alluring? I just found her to be scary looking and I couldn't believe these guys would be falling all over her. I don't mean to be catty...I'm actually older than she was when she made this film but I'm still calling her out on being a little too witch- like. That voice! Like a much-later Lucille Ball after a couple of packs of cigarettes. Puh-leeze.

In the pantheon of fine thriller and adventure novelists of the 20th Century, Eric Ambler has always been in a shadow. He began writing in the 1930s, and continued turning out novels (and screenplays) until his death in the 1980s. With a few exceptions these novels were all quite good. But he was in the shadow of his fellow Britain Graham Greene.

Greene (like Ambler) wrote political thrillers and spy novels, but Greene (a serious supporter of Catholicism) was able to examine the universal hold of the Catholic religion in his novels like "The End Of The Affair" and "The Power And The Glory". In particular, like Alfred Hitchcock, Greene enjoyed looking at how guilt makes us all shared sinners - like his Candide traveler innocent Holly Martins plunged into betraying his old friend Harry Lime in "The Third Man".

Ambler never (sorry to say this) had that kind of depth in his writing. He did reveal the hidden connections between economic realities and international politics in books like "A Coffin For Demetrios", or "Cause For Alarm" or "The Intercom Conspiracy". But he was not pushing a religious agenda and philosophy in his novels. So while he had (and still has)deserved popularity and readers, he never could achieve the thoughtful criticism that Greene could (and still does) arouse.

His 1963 novel, "The Light Of Day", was a kind of break from his usual. Instead of concentrating a plot dealing with the political realities of Europe or the Far East, "The Light Of Day" was a first person narrative of one Arthur Simpson (played in the film by Peter Ustinov). Simpson is a small time con-man, who is hired to transport a car secretly full of illegal weapons to Istanbul from Greece. As relations between the two countries were fragile (and still are), it would not be good for him to be caught by the Turkish Secret Service with those weapons. Unfortunately for him he is so caught. The mastermind of the crime has set things up for the registration of the car and the bill of sale for the arms to be in Simpson's name. But the frantic man manages to convince the Turkish officer interrogating him to believe he knew nothing about the weapons. Simpson has to continue on his way to Istanbul to keep an eye on the people behind this. He is kept on as a chauffeur, and subsequently discovers that the weapons are not part of an assassination plot or a plan to overthrow the government, but part of a robbery scheme.

That is the plot of the novel. But Ambler makes Simpson an engaging rogue, and one fully ambivalent to the forces that make him feel like a tennis ball. By the time the novel is finished one does not care for the cynic who plans the crime, or for the Turkish police official. Both only see the fruition of their plans as important. Simpson is quite amusing, first in his honesty in seeing what a lowly toad of a small-time crook he is, and secondly his repeated abilities to create situations that make him believe he is controlling events when he really is not in such a position. As a comic novel, this may be Ambler's masterpiece.

When the novel was turned into this first rate crime caper comedy, Jules Daissin had been making films in Europe for over a decade. Starting in Hollywood in the late 1940s, his best work ("The Naked City) suggested a major career in film here. But Daissin had left wing political ideas, and he was blacklisted. Unlike many of the victims of the blacklist, Daissin moved to France and continued movie making. His biggest hit was "Rafifi", his painstaking look at a crime heist (a jewelry robbery, no less), where he played the lead role as the safe cracker. The movie also showed the success of the robbery collapse when the thieves fall out over personal matters.

After his marriage to Melina Mercouri, Daissin moved to Greece, and would make his two masterpiece comedies "Topkapi" and "Never On Sunday" (again he starred as Homer, opposite Mercouri in that film). But Daissin also took advantage, when he made "Topkapi", to alter the script.

In the novel there is no character like Mercouri's Elizabeth Lipp. The scheme is totally planned by the male character that Maximillian Schell plays. The weapons are involved in the jewel robbery scheme, but here there is a difference that Daissin brought into Ambler's story. Simpson (in the novel) never goes into great detail about the robbery - he is only there as the chauffeur for the getaway car, so he is sitting outside when the robbery takes place. But for the creator of RIFIFI, Daissin could not resist creating a second complicated robbery scheme, involving setting up an alibi at a public wrestling match, delaying the movement of a lighthouse, using pulleys and tackle to lower a man through a window into the main room of a museum, and criss-crossing the Topkapi Palace/Museum roof without being seen. He does this very well. The cast ably assists, with Mercouri as an honest nymphomaniac who loves jewelry, Schell as her partner and sometimes lover, Robert Morley as a mechanical genius who manages to wipe axle grease on his face in a quick comedy highlight, Akim Tamiroff as a drunken Turkish cook who hates the foreigners (except Simpson) and only likes the British, and best - Ustinov as the sweaty, hopelessly over-his-head Simpson. It was a role that won Ustinov his second Best Supporting Actor Oscar.

I notice there is a lament that, despite the ending, there was never any sequel film. I suspect this was due to Ambler, who did write a second novel narrated by Simpson, about a land grab in Africa. It is not as good as "The Light Of Day", and has never been filmed.

It's a lot of fun and it's suspenseful as well, if you haven't seen it before. The acting is sometimes outrageously hammy but it fits neatly into the general atmosphere, which is almost always excessive -- the music, the performances, the flamboyant tourist attractions, the stunts, the jokes, the impossible caper itself.

The caper is, well, if not impossible, highly improbable because it involves the most intricate planning and is pulled off without practice and without a flaw. If you or I were to try it, scampering across the sky-high domes of museums in Istanbul, pulling ropes a predetermined number of millimeters, coordinating the escape plans, the first thing we'd do is fall off the roof and die.

Maximilian Schell is the brains behind the burglary, an excellent actor who doesn't have much to do except show his mile-wide grin. Melina Mercouri is his girl friend who is treated as a semi-maniacal nymphomaniac, kind of unconvincingly, although she has a neatly assembled, lanky, supple figure. Her cracked, throaty voice sounds cured by years of smoking Papastratos. Peter Ustinov, the "schmo" who is inducted into the gang, provides most of the humor and he's very effective, especially in his dealings with the crazy, drunken cook played by Akim Tamirov. Tamirov, intoxicated and mangling his English, whispers hoarsely to Ustinov that he is here to identify Russian spies. "You mean -- are you here, umm, officially?" "Fishily? NO, NO, not fishily, I give you good MEAT. No FISHILY." And Tamirov brandishes a hideous wrinkled smoked fish under Ustinov's nose.

The general impression is that the cast and crew had a good time, and the viewer probably will too.

Topkapi is interesting at a minimum, with quite an elaborate heist.

Some of the characterization's odd and unrelatable, Ustinov holds the films together in that regard, with his characters's humorous unassuming ordinariness.

"Topkapi" is a very good film, but I noticed that a reviewer thought this film was better than director Dassin's earlier brilliant caper film, "Rififi". Well, I certainly would not go that far, as "Rififi" is probably the best or one of the very best robbery films of all time. It is interesting, however, how Jules Dassin seemed to almost make a specialty of these sort of films! What it does have that "Rififi" does not is a sense of humor, but that just isn't enough to make it better than the earlier French film noir masterpiece.

Possibly the best thing going for "Topkapi" is the locale. After all, it's wonderful to see the wonderful city of Istanbul showcased like this--and scenes with the crooks on the rooftops looking at the cityscape are just breathtaking--so much so I would have loved to have seen this on the big screen. The other good things the film has in its favor is a masterful director, a very good ensemble cast and an interesting script--though one clearly derrived from similar films that preceded it (apart from "Rififi", also "The Killing", "Big Deal on Madonna Street", "Bob le Flambeur" and even "The Pink Panther"). In fact, because the film is a bit derivative, I had to knock a point off my vote. Still, it's a nice film and the heist sequence was done well---very tense and meticulous.

By the way, although the film never seemed to get much attention, another very good caper film is "Grand Slam" (1967). Again, it suffers a bit from being a not wholly original idea, but it's a dandy film as well.

Nearly 60 years after it was made, Topkapi remains a delight to watch. It is a gleeful and suspenseful film centered around a remarkable jewel heist from the Topkapi Museum in Istanbul. The movie proceeds with a great deal of humor and does not take itself entirely seriously; nonetheless it manages to imbue the proceedings with an ever increasing level of suspense, which finally peaks in the storied jewel heist.

The cast and characters of the movie are lively and fun to watch. Maximilian Schell, and Melina Mercouri play a pair of professional jewel thieves who almost purr with satisfaction as they engineer and carry out the heist. Peter Ustinov is superb in his portrayal of Arthur Simpson, a petty criminal swept up, and some thing when she finds to be for larger and infinitely more dangerous than he had bargain for.

The movie is enhanced by an energetic and lively, score by the famous Greek composer, Manos Hatzidakis, and the cinematography is gorgeous, having been filmed on location in Greece and Istanbul.

What more could you want to while away an evening? This is a fun movie, and simply not to be messed!