Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 19-March-06
Spoiler Rating: Medium

Topkapi (1964)

If you, like me, haven't fully grasped what Steven Soderbergh & Co. are after with the "Ocean's 11/12/13" series (yes, another is on the way), then "Topkapi" may be the movie for you. Coming between the original "Ocean's 11" and "The Thomas Crown Affair," this film helped define the larky heist genre with an ease that modern imitators have yet to nail down. It's funny, sexy, and engaging in a very '60s but very timeless way.

One thing "Topkapi" proves is the enduring value of location, location, location (as its cousins in the James Bond series know). After establishing a jet-setting tone with stops in France and Greece, the action moves to Turkey and the glorious city of Istanbul. It's here that the Topkapi Museum houses the world's most perfect emeralds (embedded in a sultan's dagger), which international jewel thief Elizabeth Lipp (Melina Mercouri) wants desperately to possess. To attain her desire, she enlists an old flame (Maximilian Schell) with a knack for planning to the last detail. His scheme for lifting the dagger includes a group of amateurs without criminal records, each of whom brings a specific skill to the task.

The trick of heist movies is to turn bad guys into good guys — or at least guys we like and envy — and the thieves of "Topkapi" get away with it by making it look like a blast. Mercouri wields that European, middle-aged sex bomb thing with irresistible gusto (just watch how she drools at a traditional Turkish wrestling match), and her partners pick up a glow while following in Elizabeth's wake. Yet much of the story and most of the humor revolve around the luckless Arthur Simpson (Peter Ustinov), an exiled British "schmo" who stumbles into two dangerous (and opposing) plots and just tries to keep his head above water. Or, to be specific, he tries not to fall off the roofs of palaces, a goal which he almost misses on one hilarious occasion. Ustinov won an Academy Award for his performance, making him one of the few actors to turn comedy into Oscar gold.

Although by now we've all sat through scenes of burglars evading sensors to pick up precious loot (many of which probably borrow from this movie), "Topkapi" still boasts a harrowing sequence of the heist in progress, involving a mechanical parrot and a lighthouse in addition to a man dangling from a rope. This bracing bit of fun leads to an ending that's a tad lame but not enough to spoil the overall effect.

"Topkapi" is currently being retooled as the next coming of Thomas Crown (with Pierce Brosnan reprising the role). Before seeing that revised replica, do yourself a favor and get a hold of the original goods.

Copyright © 2006 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.