Topaz (1969) | Presenting Hitchcock Podcast

Gooooood evening. In this months episode of Presenting Hitchcock, Cory and Aaron need to find the truth in as many places a possible as they discuss “Topaz.”

Picture Title: Topaz (1969)

Written by: Samuel A. Taylor

Based on the novel by Leon Uris

Starring: Frederick Stafford, John Forsythe, Dany Robin, John Vernon, Karin Dor, Michel Piccoli, Philippe Noiret, Claude Jade, Michel Suber, Per-Axel Arosenious, and Roscoe Lee Browne

Directed by: Alfred Hitchcock

Trailer:

Our Favourite Trivia:

Director Cameo: At the airport getting out of a wheelchair.

According to Alfred Hitchcock, this was another of his experimental movies. In addition to the dialogue, the plot is revealed through the use of colors, predominantly red, yellow, and white. He admits that this did not work out.

Alfred Hitchcock hired Leon Uris to adapt his own novel. But Uris didn’t care for Hitchcock’s eccentric sense of humor, nor did he appreciate Hitchcock’s habit of monopolizing all of his time as they worked through a script. Uris wrote the first draft of the screenplay, but Alfred Hitchcock declared it unshootable at the last minute, and called in Samuel A. Taylor (writer of Vertigo (1958)) to rewrite it from scratch. 

The story is loosely based on the 1962 Sapphire Affair, which involved the head of France’s SDECE in the United States, the spy Philippe Thyraud de Vosjoli, a friend of Uris, who played an important role in “helping the U.S. discover the presence of Russian offensive missiles in Cuba.”

Philippe Noiret had a horse accident just before the shooting of the film began. That’s why he uses a crutch to walk. Alfred Hitchcock preferred this solution instead of replacing him at the last minute.

The original cut of the film ended with a duel between André and Jacques in a French football stadium. It was shot by associate producer Herbert Coleman when Hitchcock had to return to the United States for a family emergency. Audiences panned the ending during test screenings. They also said the film was far too long.

Under pressure from the studio, Hitchcock shot a second ending that he actually liked better, with Jacques escaping on an Aeroflot flight to the Soviet Union as André and Nicole board their adjacent Pan Am flight back to the United States. However, the ending apparently confused audiences. Also, screenwriter Samuel Taylor objected to the villain escaping unpunished, and there were fears that the ending would offend the French government.

The “airport ending” briefly appeared on British prints of the film by mistake, but those prints were soon altered with the final ending, which was a preexisting shot of the apartment exterior, with the sound of a gunshot added to insinuate that Granville commits suicide.

Running at two hours and twenty-three minutes, this is Alfred Hitchcock’s longest movie.

The 143-minute cut of the film was released for the first time by Universal on DVD in 1999; it used the second ending in which Jacques escapes. 

This movie was Alfred Hitchcock’s biggest failure. On a budget of $4 million, Topaz earned $3.8 million in box office rentals from the United States and Canada in 1970.

The Random Draw for Next Picture:

Next up, we’ll be discussing “The Skin Game”

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