Topkapi (1964)

Please don't spend money on this.

Best movie ever!

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

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.

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.

We all know that a film can look good on paper as long as there are film fans who have not seen it.It is only by watching a particular film that a film fan is in a position to decide whether it is a masterpiece or a terrible piece of entertainment ? "Topkapi" is known as a brilliant heist film but film critic Lalit Rao could not really get to appreciate it as this film's lead players choose to spend their time in pursuing other pleasure activities instead of concentrating on their heist plans.It is due to this and other plot related inconsistencies that Topkapi can be considered as an absolutely weak effort by maestro of heist film genre Monsieur Jules Dassin.He is known to have made better films where action spoke louder than words. While watching "Topkapi",one can surely notice that there are too many nice views of Turkey.It is not known whether it was all intentionally relevant or director Jules Dassin wanted to achieve a kind of exotic nirvana in order to find spiritual enlightenment in Istanbul.It is due to these reasons that there are moments in this film where it appears as if it is nothing but a glamorous propaganda film made for Turkish government with a sole objective of giving a boost to local tourism industry.It is only for 20 minutes of its heist sequence that "Topkapi" is able to cement interest in viewers' minds.Alas,by that time viewers must surely have made up their mind to stop paying any attention to what is happening with the film.

A real masterpiece, important also for the images it offers of an Istanbul which does not exist anymore (nostalgia…)Who knows if they still practice that fascinating wrestling with oil…And those small traveling circuses, with distorting glasses and merry-go-rounds and sugar floss?The problem though, is the terrible English pronunciation of Melina Mercouri (let alone her teeth…)Her fictional name is "Elizabeth", she pronounces it "Elishabesh". When she wants to say "Sit here", she says "Shit here", which is not very beautiful…But Ustinov, Morley, Tamiroff (!) and the others… Wonderful