Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.

GazerRise Fantastic!

Glucedee It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

treywillwest First off, Jules Dassin is still, even with all of the attention he gets for being one of the Hollywood Ten, one of the most underrated autuers to ever originate from Hollywood. This seemingly lighthearted work may have been received as minor, but in fact in encapsulates the themes apparent in Dassin's oeuvre and moves his political critique in a bold new direction.Dassin's ability to construct suspense is, I think, worthy of comparison to that of Hitchcock. His appreciation for architecture as an extension of natural landscapes reminds me of that of Antonioni. He again lives up to those comparisons with this film. This movie brings many of the qualities of Dassin's best, older films together: the on-location semi-documentarian urban intensity of "Naked City", the concern for Classical values being turned against themselves as manifested by Greco-Roman wrestling from "Night and the City", and the appreciation of crime as a collaborative and conspiratorial art form previously depicted by Dassin in "Rififi". It seems to me no wonder Dassin would admire conspirators. Did not the Blacklist force him and his fellow commie artists to conspire against the oppression they faced in '50s Hollywood? What is unique about this movie in relation to Dassin's other work is his comfort here with female desire. The lead character, a lady thief, becomes visibly desirous of the athletic, male wrestlers, as well as of wealth. With this piece of work, Dassin's political message, if a bit more allegorical than it was pre-Blacklist, is both more despairing and more hopeful than before. One of the first faces seen in the film is that of Stalin, but not the actual man, rather a puppet at a circus, equated with the marionette leaders of the capitalist world,Roosevelt and Churchill, sitting with Joe. The film ends with an idea of liberation suggested as such. What if, in addition to the sabotage of capitalist wealth and desire, someone tried to rob the Czarist jewels locked deep inside the Soviet Kremlin? Can such a purification of the socialist imagination be responsibly made? Dassin seems to think such a suggestion should be made, whether or not it should be realized. .

moonspinner55 Jules Dassin's film version of Eric Ambler's book "The Light of Day" seems more like a light-hearted variation of his French heist-drama "Rififi" from 1955. A glamorous Greek thief and her Swiss lover concoct an ingenious plan to rob an emerald-studded dagger from the Topkapi Museum in Istanbul with help from a disparate group of wily characters. Peter Ustinov (wonderful) received the Supporting Actor Oscar as a British con-artist in Turkey who is initially recruited by Turkish security to keep an eye on this raffish team. The picture works mostly on a visual level, with a bravura use of color coupled with spiky editing to propel the story. If only the screenplay had been wittier, Dassin and company might have turned out a masterpiece of the genre. The movie simply isn't as sharp or funny as one might hope. The heist sequence is breathlessly intricate, and the sardonic finale is also a dandy...and yet there is a puzzling feeling of dissatisfaction which hangs over the end results. **1/2 from ****

teknozen It's been many decades since Topkapi or the wonder of Peter O'Toole and that apogee of chic herself Audrey Hepburn delighted us in How to Steal a Million. These are exceedingly clever movies starring very attractive people wearing seriously good clothes while hanging out in exotic and/or luxurious locations and driving autos as erotic as the white Lincoln suicide-door convertible in Topkapi or Peter O'T.'s mint XKE sportster. Hey, life was good! Not only that, the dialogue was witty and multi-leveled. I'd forgotten the homoerotic subtext in Topkapi, made pretty damn explicit in the Turkish Wrestler sequence, which is not even remotely gay, but definitely hot, and a hoot, to boot! Observe Melina Mercouri struggle to contain herself watching the big oiled-up dudes in leather pants writhe about as the Turkish secret police are equally preoccupied. We're almost talking NC-17, but happily Topkapi predates that absurdist system. Most contemporary comedies—even the dominant gross-out variety—seem old-maidish by comparison. Both mastermind Maximilian Schell (never more handsome) and the hunky gymnast Gilles Ségal flirt with everybody in sight irrespective of gender. Even the bumbling, Oscar-collecting "schmo" Peter Ustinov gets an ardent male admirer. Nor is there a whiff of homophobia to dampen the mood. It may have been 1964, but these people are way more hip and sophisticated than, say, George Clooney, to cite a typical example from the current talent pool.Gilles Ségal never speaks a word in the English language Topkapi, yet he deftly steers clear of mime's clichés for an eloquent performance. Albeit unknown in the States, he's terrific, yet but one of many pleasures in this classic of the caper genre. The formidable Melina Mercouri usually gets all the attention, and very true: movie stars of the stratospheric Sophia Loren variety have vanished from the cinematic heavens. Still, it's the men who not only pull off the heist, but likewise effortlessly do the heavy lifting that keeps this picture as satisfying as good champagne.Here's a conversational gambit for a phellow philm phreak: How would you cast the remake? What about your choice for a director? I'd say Topkapi is at least as ripe as Ocean's 11 for a revisit. Just don't give Clooney the Maximillian Schell role. For one, he's too old, and for another, it really should be a Euro. How about Nicolas Cazalé? Or Jean Dujardin was brilliant in the OSS-117 spoofs, which hardly anybody saw outside of France or pre-Artist. Then again, Tom Hardy seems like he can do anything, especially a slightly dangerous sexuality.I'm stumped, though on the Melina Mercouri, and my best guess so far is Angelina Jolie. Don't snicker. She was amazing in Salt.

MartinHafer "Topkapi" is a very good film, but I noticed that a reviewer thought this film was better than director Dassin's earlier brilliant caper film, "Rififi". Well, I certainly would not go that far, as "Rififi" is probably the best or one of the very best robbery films of all time. It is interesting, however, how Jules Dassin seemed to almost make a specialty of these sort of films! What it does have that "Rififi" does not is a sense of humor, but that just isn't enough to make it better than the earlier French film noir masterpiece.Possibly the best thing going for "Topkapi" is the locale. After all, it's wonderful to see the wonderful city of Istanbul showcased like this--and scenes with the crooks on the rooftops looking at the cityscape are just breathtaking--so much so I would have loved to have seen this on the big screen. The other good things the film has in its favor is a masterful director, a very good ensemble cast and an interesting script--though one clearly derrived from similar films that preceded it (apart from "Rififi", also "The Killing", "Big Deal on Madonna Street", "Bob le Flambeur" and even "The Pink Panther"). In fact, because the film is a bit derivative, I had to knock a point off my vote. Still, it's a nice film and the heist sequence was done well---very tense and meticulous.By the way, although the film never seemed to get much attention, another very good caper film is "Grand Slam" (1967). Again, it suffers a bit from being a not wholly original idea, but it's a dandy film as well.