Jules Dassin's Topkapi was one of the lavish heist movies, set in touristy locales, that were all the vogue four decades ago. And Dassin executes the heist itself -- of an emerald-encrusted dagger from the famed museum in Istanbul -- with grace, precision and suspense. But it's a very long time coming.
Dassin seems reluctant even to start the movie, dilly-dallying with a proto-psychedelic opening sequence involving games of chance and glittering gems. Then Melina Mercouri, shot in an iridescent haze, bulldozes her way out to address the audience but fails owing to her thick-as-moussaka accent. Finally we get to the rounding up of the gang of amateurs who will pull off the caper: mastermind Maximilian Schell, Robert Morley, Peter Ustinov, Gilles Segal (as a deaf-mute gymnast), and Mercouri.
The plotting and rehearsing of the crime take up most of the movie, leaving us to be entertained by the characters, none of which is really written. So instead we get each actor's idiosyncratic bag of tricks. And while Morley and Ustinov reliably amuse us, Schell flaunts his Continental-cool duds with a smug smirk frozen on his face. Mercouri, meanwhile, vamps it up like a demented drag queen doing Joan Crawford. What little friction exists among the cast members gets played for laughs -- no subversive subplots, no separate agendas are afoot.
Dassin made his reputation directing tough, unsentimental films in the noir cycle: Brute Force, Thieves' Highway, Night and the City. When forced back to Europe by the Hollywood blacklist, he did a superior caper film, Rififi; Topkapi seems a belated attempt to recapture it. But the chilled-down, ironic style that came into fashion in the early 1960s doesn't suit his earnest talents. Topkapi remains professional and pleasant but is now looking more and more like a period piece.
