“Topkapi” (1964)
Shot in a playful technicolor in obvious studio sound stages and evincing a gay tone, Dassin’s 1969 heist movie “Topkapi” is the polar opposite of the gritty, shot-on-location mood and tone of his earlier films. Like “The Happy Thieves” meets “Ocean’s Eleven,” Dassin’s mid ‘60s shift is light, silly and occasionally as delightful as it hopes to be —arguably Dassin is doing a spoof on the heist film he popularized himself with “Rififi.” The movie centers on a ex-romantic criminal pair (Maximilian Schell and Melina Mercouri) hoping to steal a jeweled dagger from an Istanbul museum, and they recruit a disreputable crew to assist, including an English rube and small time hustler (Peter Ustinov). Actually duped into their plot, Ustinov’s hapless Arthur Simpson falls into the hands of the Turkish police who assume this theft plot is a grand terrorist conspiracy to assassinate military leaders. Full of bumbling and unreliable crew members, “Topkapi” is meant to be a frothy heist bauble in the vein of “Charade.” But with Dassin still persona non grata in the U.S. and forced to use an mostly international stars, the movie compensates with some left-of-center flavor. Co-starring Robert Morley, Gilles Ségal, Jess Hahn and Akim Tamiroff, it’s Ustinov’s inept, in-over-his-head boob who strikes the perfect balance of endearing light touch, but also perfectly conveying stakes when they need to surface (he won a best supporting Oscar for his performance, and it’s well deserved). As cloying as some of the movie can be, the breathless heist set piece of the movie is terrific: it’s arguably a masterclass in silence, tension and catharsis. It feels like the B-squad movie of B-team castoffs, but for all its hand me down qualities, “Topkapi” is still a charming little trinket that’s easy to enjoy.
In a career that saw 24 features, other notable Dassin films include 1957’s “He Who Must Die” which re-teamed him with Jean Servais and marked his first ever collaboration with Mercouri. Along with “Never On Sunday,” they would have success with more Greco-inspired pictures, such as “Phaedra” (1962), where she played opposite Anthony Perkins. 1968’s solid “Uptight” saw Dassin shine more light on the disenfranchised and unravel a different kind of corruption within a team of black revolutionaries during the Civil Rights movement. And his successful 1978 collaboration with his wife came to an end in “A Dream Of Passion,” co-starring Ellen Burstyn, where the infamous tragedy of Medea is re-imagined and re-enacted. Let’s just imagine that this was Dassin’s final film, because the less said of “The Circle of Two,” the better.
Your turn, faithful readers of The Playlist, to tell us about your favorite Dassin films. Are there some lesser-known works we missed to shower with praise? Hold nothing back. Or, if you’d just like to continue the discussion of how masterful “Rififi” is, you won’t get any complaints from us. You know where to go.
— Nik Grozdanovic with Rodrigo Perez and Oliver Lyttelton
