Topaz

Production

Universal Pictures released Topaz in December 1969. Samuel A. Taylor wrote the screenplay, adapting Leon Uris’s 1967 novel based loosely on the so-called Sapphire Affair, a real French intelligence scandal connected to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Alfred Hitchcock directed Frederick Stafford as the French agent Andre Devereaux.

Story

After a senior KGB officer defects in Copenhagen and reveals that the Soviets are sending missiles to Cuba, the French agent Devereaux is asked to travel to Havana to verify the intelligence. The investigation also uncovers a high-level mole codenamed Columbine within the French intelligence service in Paris.

Reception

Topaz received mixed reviews on release and was the second of three commercially disappointing Hitchcock films of the late 1960s and 1970s. The film has since attracted renewed scholarly interest for its Cold War period detail and for the long, dialogue-free assassination sequence shot in slow motion.