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Arapaima (d) 25 février 2010 à 16:34 (CET)

Topaz film Hitchcock 1969 EN

TOPAZ

The story is set in 1962, during the Cold War

and opens with images of a huge Soviet military parade on the Red Square. In Copenhague, Boris Kusenov ( Per-Axel Arosenius ), a high-ranking Soviet intelligence officer defects to the West with his wife and daughter.

In the USA

CIA agent Nordstrom (John Forsythe) debriefs Kusenov and learns that russian missiles are to be posted in Cuba. Since american agents cannot act in that case, Nordstrom enlists the aid of his friend and french agent André Devereaux (Frederick Stafford), encouraging him to accompany his daughter Michèle (Claude Jade) on her honeymoon with journalist François Picard (Michel Subor) as a premise to get him to New York. André accepts, but his wife Nicole (Dany Robin) is worried for him.

In New-York, André entrusts a familiar contact from Martinico Island, Philippe Dubois ( Roscoe Lee Browne to get hold of some seriously damaging papers (concerning Soviet plans in Cuba) from the visiting Cuban official Rico Parra (John Vernon) . Parra is in New York to appear at the United Nations , stays at the Cuban embassy in Harlem and shows off a lot of solidarity with "the masses". Dubois, taking the identity of a black journalist from Ebony , sneaks into the ambassy (which is seething with visitors and surrounded by an enthusiastic leftist mob) , manages to take photos of some of the documents and then runs away, chased by Cuban revolutionaries. While cunningly dodging away, Dubois shams bumping into and overthrowing André, who was watching events from the other side of the street, and slips the camera into his hand. Parra's bodyguard picks up André, stares at him, and lets him go...

The stolen documnts confirm that the Soviets are secretly transporting and placing missiles in Cuba. André Deveraux, unheading his wife's fear and jalousy, jets off to Cuba (under the identity of a french trade attaché) to find out more details for his north-american friends.

In Cuba

André catches up with his mistress Juanita de Cordoba (Karin Dor) . The young and beautyful widow to a former first-hour wealthy "hero of the Revolution", she is now leader of the local underground anticastrist network, goes on living on her family's mansion, and she acts undercover and collects information as Parra's lover... André on arriving finds Parra leaving Juanita's mansion, and the anger and jalousy of both men tightens up the patio tropical atmosphere. During a beautiful scene of intimacy in the mansion dimmed sleeping-room (Juanita in an aerial négligé and André half nude), the french agent, before going to bed with Juanita, asks her to somehow take photos of the missiles as they are unloaded from russian boats at the harbour.

Juanita sends a couple of her servants to spy on the harbour, but they are detected by the "barbudos" as they are filming the russian boats, and they barely have time to hide their little Olympus camera into a bridge handrail before they are arrested. They are tortured, but don't yield, and another of Juanita's anti-castrist "peones" has time to come over and recollect the camera; the film is developped and transferred to microfilms which are carefully hidden in André's typewriter. In the meanwhile Parra's bodyguard, during a big mass rally held during a lenghty speech delivered by Fidel Castro recognizes André's face from the incident in front of the hotel.

In the cuban DGI (XXXXX) torture-room, Parra, putting his ear next to the maimed mouth of the dying female resistant, hears her whisper their leader's name :Juanita de Cordoba (beautiful close-up of Parra's blue eyes darkening, above his unkempt "barbudo's" face) . Parra and his men rush up to search Cordoba's estate, and find a lot of ckeus. Parra confronts Juanita and, hugging her in his arms, shoots her to save her from being tortured to death. In that setting (one of the film's most memorable shots) , Juanita is seen from overhead, collapsing, and her dress spreads out on the floor like a bloodstain (although it is purple not red), or a matador' cape, on the wide black-and-white pavement tiles.

Parra phones to the airport to have André detained, but the French has just flown away to Miami some minutes ago. He has been searched thoroughly at the airport on departure, but the Cuban customs have been unable to find the carefully hidden microfilms, which will provide crucial information for the CIA about Soviet activities in Cuba.

Back in Washington

André, after painfully brooding in the plane about the fate of Juanita he left in Cuba, finds his home empty : his wife has deserted him due to his Cuban love interest, and returned to Paris. As Cuba complained to Paris about the "unfriendly attitude" of the french attaché, André is also recalled to Paris for a reset. Before he leaves, he is informed by Nordstrom about the existence of a Soviet spy ring called 'Topaz' , which leaks documents away to the KGB, within the French intelligence service . The leader's name is unknown, but one of its members is certainly NATO official Henri Jarré (Philippe Noiret).

In Paris

André attempts to get to the bottom of the whole leak problem, while her daughter Michèle tries to reconcile her parents. André invites some of his old friends and colleagues, including Jarré, to a lunch at a fine luxury restaurant, "Chez Pierre". While Jarré begins to gorge himself with pie and gulps down a big glass of wine, André tells the others about Topaz, in order to provoke some reaction. In the uneasy silence, Jarré, still munching, answers calmly between two bites that all this is a piece of disinformation, since he knows for certain that Kusenov in fact died 2 years ago; and he stands up and leaves... Jarré begins to panic, and in the afernoon visits the man who is the leader of the spy ring, Jacques Granville (Michel Piccoli). Granville, in a gorgeous silk night gown, is annoyed because Jarré has stirred up, and also because he upsets his rendez-vous : he is "waiting for somebody". As Jarré is leaving Granville's place, he passes by a woman who arrives. It is Nicole, André's wife, and as Granville greets her in his hall and kisses her, we see a photo in a frame : Deveraux, Nicole and Granville in sheepskins jackets and berets, with slung rifles. So they were old friends since their days together in the French Resistance...

André sends his son-in-law François to Jarré's flat under the pretent of interviewing and sketching him down for a newspaper, in fact to harass and extract information out of him. As Jarré frets along, François calls Deveraux from Jarré's home, but the call is cut short : Jarré has called in his two goons. Deveraux and Michèle rush together to Jarré's flat, and find him dead, whileFrançois has disappeared. André and Michèle return to Nicole's, and a short time later François arrives : he was clubbed , but came to and managed to escape from his captors' car. He has overheard and memorized a phone number (which was easy in Paris in the early '60s) and shows a sketch of Jarré. Nicole, who was staring at the window then turns around and tells her family, with tearfull eyes, that Granville must be the head of Jarré and the leader of "Topaz". André, who understands a lot of things, looks sad and angry.

The 3 ends

• In the original ending, there was a duel between André and Jacques in a French soccer stadium, shot by associate producer Herbert Coleman when Hitchcock had to return to the U.S. for a family emergency. This ending was panned by audiences during test screenings.

• Under pressure from the studio, Hitchcock shot an ending he actually liked better, with Jacques escaping on an Aeroflot flight to the Soviet Union just at the same time as André and Nicole are boarding their Pan Am flight to the States. But this ending apparently confused audiences, and aroused a lot of uneasiness in France : showing a high political executive escaping to Russia was not thought correct...

• So, as a compromise, Hitchcock used existing footage to create a new ending : Granville, exposed and shamefully expelled from a NATO meeting, commits suicide behind his drawn curtains (we only hear the report, since no footage of his doing so existed).

• Eventually, the studio decided to release different endings in different countries: the suicide in the U.S. and France - the airport ending in England., as if inspired by the Magnificent Five affairs.