It's a small thing, but I think Hitchcock's cameo appearance in this film was one of his worst ever. It comes at the wrong moment, seems to be very awkwardly inserted, and is just plain silly (or stupid, take your pick). His next two worse cameos were "Torn Curtain" & "Marnie" in that order. His earlier movies were better...
Regards,
RSGRE
What interests me about this cameo is how fairly late in comes in the film -- by Hitchcock's standards of the late fifties/early sixties, at least. (He's in the first shots of "North by Northwest" and "The Birds," for instance.)
My theory is he wasn't too proud of "Topaz," and rather wanted to "hide" in it.
Compare this to his next film -- "Frenzy" -- in which Hitchcock is proudly present (wearing a jaunty British bowler derby) in the film's opening Thames river speech scene, TWICE. Two separate
shots, the second held for a long time as a nearby man comments on the woman's body in the river.
As critics who hated "Topaz" noted, Hitchcock's cameo was too apt: he was in a wheelchair.
But Hitchcock got the last laugh. He leaps out of the wheelchair, and he leaped to a comeback the next time with "Frenzy."
But no one has said where it is... After the interrogation at the suburban house,
NYC Airport teminal scene, crowded hallway, back of nurse pushing a wheelchair w/ a passenger, They stop to meet a friend turn right, and Hitch gets up out of the chair... ~ 33 min in the film
in VA
It's a small thing, but I think Hitchcock's cameo appearance in this film was one of his worst ever.There is nothing wrong with the cameo. A cameo is just a cameo anyway, and I suspect that he already had to use a wheel chair (some of the time).