For what it is worth -- and to demonstrate how sometimes "how one sees a movie makes the movie a great memory," I will quickly tell my story as a young teen seeing Topaz for the first time in a theater at Christmas, 1969.
First of all, back in 1969 it was Christmas, and not summer, when a lot of the "big movies" came out. Topaz was just one from a choice that included On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Hello Dolly, The Italian Job, and holdovers like Paint Your Wagon and Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice.
Hitchcock's last film before Topaz had been three and one half years earlier, in July of 1966: Torn Curtain with Paul Newman and Julie Andrews.
Hitchocck took a few years off working his way towards making Topaz, but in America, on the three major TV networks -- mainly NBC and CBS, but ABC a little bit too -- major RECENT Hitchocck movies started getting broadcast and broke ratings records:
September 1966: Rear Window opens the 1966-1967 season of NBC Saturday Night at the movies.
September 1966: Psycho is set to broadcast on the CBS Friday Night Movie -- and is cancelled at the last minute because of the real-life murder of a US Senate candidate's daughter -- and compliants in general from affiliates.
September 1967: North by Northwest premieres on the CBS Friday Night Movie.
November 1967: Psycho gets a record-breaking Los Angeles showing and plays in other cities locally as well that year (NYC, Miami...)
January 1968: The Birds plays on NBC Saturday Night at the Movies -- and is the highest rated movie shown on TV in history to that date.
November 1968: North by Northwest is again shown on the CBS Friday Night Movie.
March 1969: The Birds is again shown on NBC Saturday Night at the Movies.
Also in 1966-through 1969 on various networks: The Trouble With Harry, The Man Who Knew Too Much 1956, Marnie.
While local channels showed Strangers on a Train, Dial M for Murder, The Wrong Man, Shadow of a Doubt, Saboteur "and more."
CONT
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roger1 (2270)
13 days ago
And so, in December of 1969, when Alfred Hitchcock finally debuted a NEW film -- Topaz -- I do believe that he now had a vastly enlarged fan base of young people who had seen all those Hitchcock classics on network and local TV -- none more popular than the once-forbidden Psycho and the kid-friendly Birds.
I saw Topaz in a very gigantic old "Palace Theater" -- a balcony, huge curtains draping the screen, plush seats, while on Christmas vacation with my family.
Hitchcock was now not only popular through all those TV broadcasts of his movies(with his TV show in syndication), he was popular as an "artiste" through the recent publication of the book "Hitchcock/Truffaut".
At this Palace Theater, the lobby was festooned with giant photos of Hitchocck and a table with Hitchcock/Truffaut on sale in stacks.
And then I saw the movie.
Well, the EXPERIENCE was so big that it hardly mattered when the film ended not with a chase on Mount Rushnore but rather with a patched-together freeze-frame on an unexplained suicide.
New York Times critic Vincent Canby wrote a review that said "Topaz: Alfred Hitchocck at HIs Best" and he put Topaz on his Ten Best List for 1969.
Time critic Jay Cocks wrote: Hitchcock said "If the dead were to come back, what would you do with them?" You'd call it Topaz.
I'm somewhere in between. As the cliche goes, mediocre Hitchcock is better than the best of many others but THIS one, despite its failure to land an ending...had some great sequences(the opening defection; everything at the Hotel Teresa with Roscoe Lee Browne, what happens to Juanita in Cuba, and the final Paris verbal duels.)
More than good enough as a movie. GREAT as a young memory of GOING to the movies.
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