Topkapi

A heist of revelation

Last week I made the bold statement that Kelly’s Heroes is the greatest heist movie ever. That is certainly an arguable point. But it did get me thinking about heist movies and, as a result, I decided to plunge into a few I haven’t seen.

I’m starting with 1964’s Topkapi, a light-hearted heist movie directed by Jules Dassin.

International jewel thief Melina Mercouri visits Istanbul, Turkey to eye up an exhibit in a museum: a fabulous ceremonial knife encrusted with emeralds and diamonds. She approaches heist mastermind Maximilian Schell to put together a plan to liberate the treasure from the museum. He comes up with a novel scheme: hire nothing but amateurs. His logic is that with a heist of such a famous and well guarded item, the European police agencies will look to find and round up every known high-level thief, hindering their ability to get away with it Scot-free.

They start by recruiting Robert Morley, a mechanical genius who builds elaborate toys. He helps them find a way to overcome the alarm system. Because the alarms are wired into pressure sensors in the floor, Schell comes up with the brilliant idea to seized the item from above, by lowering someone from the ceiling, suspended from wires.

Sound familiar? Well, this movie is where that idea originated. It has been copied often, most famously in the first Tom Cruise Mission Impossible movie.

BTW, Topkapi was also one of the main inspirations for the original Mission Impossible TV show, with its cast of talented non-professionals using gadgets, magic tricks, and disguises to pull off crazy capers every week.

In addition to hiring a circus strong man and acrobat for the snatch, Schell finds a third rate English hustler in Greece, played by the always delightful Peter Ustinov, to drive a car loaded with hidden smoke grenades and a rifle across the Turkish border and deliver it to Morley. Unfortunately, the Turkish guards disassemble the car, find the items, and take Ustinov into custody. Threatening him with hanging him for terrorism, they re-assemble the car and get him to agree to spy on the people who hired him.

From there, the movie is a tense narrative with Ustinov trying to uncover the details of the scheme and the preparation for the heist while acting as the group’s chauffeur. Because this is a heist movie, however, something goes wrong and Schell decides to bring Ustinov in on the job.

We get glimpses of the plan, but not the whole thing. This makes Topkapi a Heist of Revelation – a heist story where the plan isn’t fully revealed until it unfolds to the audience. This helps to sharpen suspense and maintain audience involvement. Director Jules Dassin, one of the greatest crime film directors ever, creates a white knuckle heist sequence filled with moments of near-disaster and uncertainty.

Tokapi is based on the novel Light of Day, by Eric Ambler, a favorite author of mine. It tells the story from the perspective of the Peter Ustinov character, rather than the heist planners, which I find interesting as a writer. I love flawed and downscale protagonists. Apparently the Academy of Motion Picture Arts agreed, since it awarded Ustinov the Best Supporting Actor for the role.

The rest of the cast is great, filled with Academy Award winners and nominees. Mercouri is a playful femme fatale, using her sex appeal to help draw in the players needed to pull off the job. (Even though she’s a bit too old for the nympho sex kitten role) And Akim Tamiroff chews the scenery delightfully as a mad Greek cook who inadvertently screws up the plans.

This movie convinced me that I need to write a post celebrating Jules Dassin. Perhaps when I finally get around to watching Rififi. Here, his skills are at a peak, rivaling Hitchcock for artistry and subtlety. There is a sequence where the gang attends an outdoor Turkish wrestling tournament to throw off the cops that is utterly absorbing in a way that has nothing to do with the heist but everything to do with Dassin’s pure mastery of cinema.

I can strongly recommend Topkapi; it’s a classic 1960s Technicolor spectacle, with a dazzling, exotic background and a tautly spun caper. It’s also a breezy comedy with a suitably random ending that unravels the crime.