Hitchcock's longest film is another cold war espionage thriller. He was inspired to make his previous film, Torn Curtain, by news stories about the Cambridge spy ring, but really Topaz is a more similar story, though with French government officials handing over secrets to the Soviets from an office in Cuba.
It's tempting to compare the Master's two cold war films. There's a danger of illogically criticising them both for not being what the other one is. Torn Curtain is a very typical Hitch film and received negative reviews because he was repeating himself. And Topaz gets forgotten because it's not a conventional Hitchcock. It's a good thing that he should make an occasional atypical film. There are no stars, no romantic leads and no set piece bravura suspense scenes.
The most memorable visual image is a view from above of a shot Cuban counter-revolutionary, her dress pooling beneath her as she falls like spreading blood. There is an ensemble cast mostly made up of French actors. Topaz has a nice atmosphere. It looks appealingly unglamorous. It's just a bit long and slow.
For a film made by a major director, Topaz seems to have been mostly forgotten. It tells a convoluted story reasonably well, and while not adding anything to the director's reputation, it is an interesting period piece and has a nicely cynical and understated conclusion.
The sprawling, epic nature of this espionage story is its chief pleasure and most of the spy-craft sequences showcase Hitchcock's technical genius (especially the set-piece with the florist – a character entirely deserving of his own franchise). Okay, some of the actors leave something to be desired, but when the filmmaking is this impeccable I'm willing to overlook the flaws.