GusF Based on the 1962 novel "The Light of Day" by Eric Ambler, this is a mostly ineffectual heist film. The script by Monja Danischewsky is pretty mediocre and seldom as funny as it thinks it is. Jules Dassin's direction is not much better but there are some nice shots here and there and he makes good use of the locations. It is too competent to be awful. The plot concerns an attempt to steal a dagger encrusted with four priceless emeralds, which once belonged to the Ottoman Sultan Mahmud I, from the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul. As ideas for heist films go, this is a belter and it is part of what attracted me to the film in the first place. However, as with the heist itself, it is all in the execution and the execution was sorely lacking. That said, it does have one major saving grace.The film stars the superlative Peter Ustinov in a wonderful performance as Arthur Simon Simpson, a small-time English swindler who operates out of the Greek port city Kavala where he attempts to sell cheap tat to tourists. He is recruited by a gang of thieves to drive a car filled with explosives, guns and other materiel which police forces tend to frown upon across the Turkish border. However, said materiel is discovered by the Turkish customs when the car is searched. After Arthur convinces the police that he is not part of the presumed assassination plot, he becomes an informer and the plotters are forced to accept his presence due to a police's claim that only the person who drove the car or the owner - the fictional Mr. Plimpton - are legally permitted to drive it. Arthur, who is not the brightest spark, lets this slip and is recruited yet again, this time as an active participant in the plot to steal the dagger. Ustinov effortlessly steals the show, which sadly was not worth nearly as much as four emeralds, as Arthur and all of the best bits of the film belong to him. In fact, I have never seen Ustinov in a film in which he had more than one scene where this was not the case. Arthur is a very sympathetic and likable character who claims that his father once described him as "a carbuncle on the behind of humanity," which is the best line in the film. As Arthur, Ustinov won his second and final Best Supporting Actor Oscar, the first being for "Spartacus", but really it should have been the Best Actor Oscar since he is the male lead.A major and almost fatal flaw in the film is the casting of the horrendous actress Melina Mercouri as Elizabeth Lipp, a brilliant career criminal / nymphomaniac and the mastermind behind the heist. She fails to deliver a single line in what even approaches a remotely convincing fashion and there are at least a dozen actresses that I would have preferred to have seen in the role. Sophia Loren is the first name that springs to mind. However, that was never on the cards as Mercouri just so happened to be the director's then girlfriend and future wife. Ah, nepotism. I have nothing against it when it works well and the relatives in question have something resembling talent but this is a particularly unsuccessful example. Her scenes with Ustinov should have been hilarious but they were no more than tolerable. They would not have even been that if a lesser actor had been cast as Arthur. While Ustinov's acting was a breath of fresh air, hers was a gust of ill-wind. Their scenes together are like the agony and the ecstasy. She was the agony. Amazingly, she was not nominated for an Oscar. The scenes in which they recorded her laughter on the toy parrot were a little weird, particularly the one in her boudoir, and I began to wonder if this scene was made more for Dassin's private consumption than anything else. Mercouri later left acting - I can't imagine why - and entered Greek politics, most notably serving as the Minister for Culture on two occasions. For the sake of the country's artistic endeavours, I hope that this was a bit better at that than she was at acting. She could hardly have been much worse, to be fair.Maximilian Schell is an excellent actor in any language and he is certainly suave but I couldn't shake the feeling that he was miscast as the Swiss master criminal Walter Harper. His performance is good but it's not one of his best. Harper is Lipp's ex-lover and they have several would-be romantic / sexy scenes between them but they have no chemistry. However, this is more the fault of the director's talentless girlfriend...I mean, the female lead. In stark, stark, stark contrast to her, Robert Morley is a wonderful actor and he was perfectly cast as the eccentric toymaker Cedric Page. He is the strongest cast member after Ustinov. Akim Tamiroff has a very funny supporting role as the alcoholic cook Gerven but none of the other actors really stood out, good, bad or indifferent. Overall, this is not a very good film at all. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in the stars...except for Melina Mercouri.

Writer_Mario_Biondi A real masterpiece, important also for the images it offers of an Istanbul which does not exist anymore (nostalgia…)Who knows if they still practice that fascinating wrestling with oil…And those small traveling circuses, with distorting glasses and merry-go-rounds and sugar floss?The problem though, is the terrible English pronunciation of Melina Mercouri (let alone her teeth…)Her fictional name is "Elizabeth", she pronounces it "Elishabesh". When she wants to say "Sit here", she says "Shit here", which is not very beautiful…But Ustinov, Morley, Tamiroff (!) and the others… Wonderful

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.

Milan Topkapi is a great example of those silly ass, slapstick comedies of the 60's, that look like a vaudeville cabaret, and not like a movie. Those films were not funny enough to be a straight forward comedy, and were too silly to be taken for a crime, thriller or any other genre it was supposed to be. Topkapi is a such case in it's purest form. The character that should have carried the comedy part here is Peter Ustinov, and he just can't do it, first because he's no Peter Sellers, and second because the script has very few punch lines for him, so the comedy part rests solely on circus acts, clown and acrobatic, and that makes the whole thing look rather stupid.Maximilian Schell is the only one who looks half as decent and the casting of Melina Mercouri is the biggest mistake of all. I know that she was director's girlfriend, at the time the movie was made,(later his wife) but come on? Could they have hired more inappropriate actress for this role in those days. She looks like a wicked witch of the east, and ruins any comedic pleasantry that this movie could have possessed with her sinister gaze that chills you to the bone, and laughter that sounds like it's been taken from a Roger Corman horror film. And she uses both with no restrain, so after a while it makes you really sick. You can think of any other major actress of the day, and she would be more appropriate for the film that is supposed to be funny and nice to look at. There is no story for 120 minutes here, so it goes nowhere most of the time, and the dreary Turkish scenery doesn't help at all. Avoid.