"Topaz" - Alfred Hitchcock (1969)

Topaz (1969) opens with newsreel-style footage of a Soviet Communist demonstration.  A large banner depicting the fathers of socialism (Lenin among them) is the opening image.  The Soviets are the chosen antagonists of the film, though they are only referred to and never seen (except in these opening newsreel images).  In fact, the Soviets are almost the MacGuffin of the film, not the spy ring Topaz as one would expect.  That’s because everyone in the film makes a fuss about the Soviets and Soviet aggression, yet their presence remains oddly symbolic.  Of course, being that this film was produced during the height of the Cold War, the Soviet influence can’t entirely be called symbolic.  The literal implications were evident from the militant opening images and beyond.

The structuring motifs of Topaz are flowers.  They’re omnipresent in most of the homes we see and in outdoor scenes as well.  Nordstom, the American official played by John Forsythe, waits in the hotel room of French secret agent Andre Devereaux, played by Frederick Stafford.  He’s waiting with an arrangement of flowers as a gift for Andre and his wife, but he’s really bearing the offering of an espionage mission.  This is an assignment that Andre reluctantly accepts.  In the opening scenes of the film, where a defecting Russian official and his family attempt to evade pursuers, they make a detour through a figurine shop where designers are taking great care to create miniature artistic recreations of flowers to go along with the statuettes they’re building.  When Andre engages an associate of his to do some freelance spy work on his behalf, he visits this associate in the Martinique Florist shop that he owns.  They carry on their conversation behind the closed doors of a cooler, with beautiful and colorful flowers all around them.  This whole film was intended to be an experiment in color schemes for Hitchcock.  An experiment he admits he failed in.  Rather than colors, flowers become the connective thread of the work.

In that scene where Andre and Philippe DuBois, his associate, speak in the cooler, Hitchcock deprives us of the sound of their conversation.  Instead, he forces the viewer into the subjectivity of the movie.  So when they close the glass doors, we can’t hear what’s going on any more than the inhabitants of the flower shop can.  We can only see.  This is a typical Hitchcock effort at simplification.  We already know what the mission is, as Nordstrom told Andre in intricate detail only a scene before.  So there’s really no need for us to hear it again.  Hitchcock saves us from this cinematic redundancy, and he experiments with his control of filmic temporality at the same time.  Hitchcock is able to compress time tremendously in this scene, as in reality, it would take much longer for Andre to explain the mission to Philippe.  But of course, filmic time has no relation whatsoever to real time.  Hitchcock exploited this fact to his benefit.  This scene in question is not unlike one in North by Northwest, in which Cary Grant explains his predicament to Leo G. Carroll, though the audience has already heard (and seen) it.  The conversation takes place on an airport runway, and Hitchcock drowns out the sound of their voices with propeller noise.

Scenes of this type are common in Hitchcock’s cinema.  They’re called recapitulation scenes, in which a character is used to remind the audience of where they are in the storyline.  It’s an old silent film technique that Hitchcock adopted, as the case was then to recapitulate for audience members who might arrive to the show late.  Hitchcock carries on with this tradition, though he modernizes and aestheticizes it.

Note how the Cuban socialist government officials are depicted as pigs in the film.  They look unkempt, smoke offensive cigars, leave food and trash piled up on their desks, and even spit on carpeting like it was a field of grass.  But Hitchcock deftly balances this with the favorable depictions of Cuban freedom fighters.  They’re seen as defiant, yet virtuous and resourceful.  The only real enemy and object worthy of contempt in this film is communism.

Note also the beautiful scene in which Juanita de Cordoba is murdered by her landlord and lover, Rico Parra.  Juanita lives her life as a respected widow of a lauded Cuban revolutionary hero, yet lives a double life as a leader of the resistance to communism.  When Rico learns of her espionage actions with Andre he shoots her, but first embraces her.  This scene is not unlike the famous death hug between Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck that closes Double Indemnity (1944).  When Rico shoots Juanita, Hitchcock cuts to his signature high-angle shot.  Juanita looks up to the heavens with a mixture of shock and pain on her face.  Then, her long purple dress begins to spread out and away from her on the floor as she slowly crumples to the ground.  The effect looks similar to a pool of blood spreading away from a victim.  Here, the flowing purple dress literally represents blood, or acts as a substitute for blood.  It’s another stunningly beautiful and tender murder from Hitchcock, with the accompanying powerful visual expressionism to boot.

Topaz is a very downbeat and somber film, largely due to the sweeping yet haunting score by master composer Maurice Jarre.  The oppressive mood in this film recalls The Wrong Man (1956) and The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), among other Hitchcock classics.  To be fair, Topaz is a flawed film.  The dialogue is uneven at times, the pace is overly languid, and the conclusion is deeply problematic.  Yet and still, it’s a great flawed film.  As Truffaut said, the kind of great flawed film that can rightfully be called so only because its creator has demonstrated he can achieve perfection time and time again.

Other Alfred Hitchcock films discussed that you may also enjoy:
HITCHCOCK: The Lost Masterworks
HITCHCOCK: The Lost Masterworks – “Secret Agent” (1936)
HITCHCOCK: The Lost Masterworks – “Jamaica Inn” (1939)
HITCHCOCK: The Lost Masterworks – “Lifeboat” (1944)
HITCHCOCK: The Lost Masterworks – “The Trouble with Harry” (1955)
HITCHCOCK: The Lost Masterworks – “Topaz” (1969)
HITCHCOCK: The Lost Masterworks – “Frenzy” (1972)
TEXTUAL ANALYSIS: “Frenzy” (1972) – Part 1
TEXTUAL ANALYSIS: “Frenzy” (1972) – Part 2