Topkapi

The overture promises bedazzlement, the particular Jules Dassin mingle of glitter and sweat. "My kingdom for the emerald," the one adorning the sultan's dagger on display at the Turkish museum, the one sparking the gleam in the eye of the larcenous adventuress (Melina Mercouri). To purloin it is a mission for the Swiss ringleader (Maximilian Schell), whose gang includes toymaker (Robert Morley), strongman (Jess Hahn), acrobat (Gilles Ségal). "The uncrowned king of Kavala nightlife" is how the Anglo-Greco conman (Peter Ustinov) imagines himself, "a carbuncle on the behind of humanity" was his father's straighter account. (The mastermind's is more succinct, "a schmo.") Wrongly arrested as terrorist accomplice, forcibly recruited as government agent, the patsy finds himself as replacement muscle on the edge of a vaulted rooftop. "It's not a question of losing my nerve—I never had none." A comic pendant to Rififi, allowed to break into flares of Technicolor abstraction along the way as Dassin builds and collapses his house of cards. Bazaar bustle, carnival saturation, a screen stretched wider and wider to accommodate the leading lady's sprawling grin. (Mercouri's lemon mane is posed against the cobalt sky whenever possible, a mechanical parrot is equipped with her recorded cackle as part of the plan.) "The overnight millionaire will be caught in a spotlight from Istanbul to Peru," the criminal aesthete prefers slowing down the lighthouse's rotating beam to shooting it, "it upsets the artist in me." The amplification of the wrestling bout from Night and the City is indicative of the jangly venture, thus pyramids of greased torsos before a mesmerized audience. The raucous spectacle at the stadium contrasts with the hushed one at the museum, "the thing with feathers" turns out to be the fly in the ointment. The coda celebrates the artifice of the sequel that never materialized. Cinematography by Henri Alekan. With Akim Tamiroff, Tito Vandis, Joe Dassin, and Ege Ernart.