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Topaz

Topaz

List Price: $19.98
Your Price: $17.98
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Excellent spy movie.
Review: This is an excellent film. First rate. It has an intelligent plot cleverly scripted by Samuel Taylor (Sabrina, Vertigo), based on Leon Uris's novel. Uris had probably access to inside information about the "Saffire" affair (whence "Topaz") and mingled fact and fiction as masters of his craft can do.

Hitchcock delivers suspense, humor, great cinematography, a story that unfolds with ease and relative verossimilitude. Karin Dor is very beatiful, and Frederick Sttafford cuts a fine figure of a man.

The bonus material includes an interview with Leonard Maltin, who shows great appreciation of the movie. However, he doesn't mention a factor which, in my view, stood in the way of its recognition when it was released and still stands now: Communist Cuba is presented as a place where torture is practiced, and its leaders are uncouth and ridiculous. The CIA men are the gooddies. Unforgivable in 1969, and even now, in Europe and it seems in the US where we must sing praises for "Comandante" and things like that. This is surely at least 70% of its lack of appreciation, and not the "transparencies" or the uncertanties about its ending.

One scene has been particularly praised, and it is only one among a score: when Cuban head Rico Parra (John Vernon) kills Juanita de Cordoba (Karin Dor). Not only the image is visually astounding, but the words: "You can't judge... not you" Rico says to Juanita before sparing her torture... bu shooting her. Also stunning the image where the two members of the Cuban resistance lie after martyrdom like Jesus and His Mother in Michelangelo's "Pietà". Wonderful movie, exiting, epic... without the excesses of the caritaturesque Bond series.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: John Forsythe makes the film. Three different endings.
Review: This is perhaps the only Alfred Hitchcock color film I have not seen, until now. It is a rarity for television. And it would be edited for television broadcast anyway. Now on DVD, you can see TOPAZ in its entirty. If you have seen TOPAZ before, well here is the surprise. There are three very different endings of the film you may have not seen yet. This DVD version will show them all to you. If the ending chosen leaves you flat, in the Bonus Material section, you can see all three alternate endings and decide the one you like best. John Forsythe (Bachelor Father [1957-62],Charlie's Angels [1976-1981] as voice of "Charlie", Dynasty [1981-89]) sure does make the beginning act of the film much more interesting to watch. I can not say this is the best of Hitchcock, but I would recommend: REAR WINDOW (1954) and ROPE (1948).

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: John Forsythe makes the film. Three different endings.
Review: This is perhaps the only Alfred Hitchcock color film I have not seen, until now. It is a rarity for television. And it would be edited for television broadcast anyway. Now on DVD, you can see TOPAZ in its entirty. If you have seen TOPAZ before, well here is the surprise. There are three very different endings of the film you may have not seen yet. This DVD version will show them all to you. If the ending chosen leaves you flat, in the Bonus Material section, you can see all three alternate endings and decide the one you like best. John Forsythe (Bachelor Father [1957-62],Charlie's Angels [1976-1981] as voice of "Charlie", Dynasty [1981-89]) sure does make the beginning act of the film much more interesting to watch. I can not say this is the best of Hitchcock, but I would recommend: REAR WINDOW (1954) and ROPE (1948).

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: This is an OK movie
Review: This movie is OK, but it isn't very good. It's boring and hard to understand at times, but it does have suspense and romance. It also has an eerie mood and an OK plot, but I do recommend this movie to everyone who is a Hitchcock fan. I give this movie three stars.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: The better Topaz with 17minutes footage
Review: This new video-version must be seen: Here Universal presents the original uncut version with a seventeen minutes footage and a new (and better) ending. It's includes more scenes with young Claude Jade as Stafford's worried daughter Michèle, for instance her joke when she arrives in New York and says "Oh I love the cubans, they are so wild." Or a laughing Karin Dor in Cuba; Frederick Stafford and Claude Jade in a car (with a Hitchcock-specific Blue Screen) or Stafford and Claude Jade visits the party at Michel Piccoli.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: hitchock enters the cold war
Review: Topaz isn't the best hicock movie out there but it is interesting to see him making a mystery about the cold war. They movie involves an american spy investigating Soviet dealing with Cuba. The movie isn't his best but still is a decent movie.


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