Scanialara You won't be disappointed!

Organnall Too much about the plot just didn't add up, the writing was bad, some of the scenes were cringey and awkward,

Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Quiet Muffin This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

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.

wes-connors For over an hour, "Topkapi" is little more than colorful location footage, nicely presented by director Jules Dassin. You have the assembling of the "heist" team, led by brassy blonde Melina Mercouri (as Elizabeth Lipp). The main recruitment is hapless Peter Ustinov (as Arthur Simpson). He won an "Academy Award" as "Best Supporting Actor" for the year, but both the end credits and screen time agree Mr. Ustinov is the film's leading actor. Probably, they didn't consider Ustinov or his role the "leading man" type... After much ado, we come to the actual robbery - of an jeweled dagger from the "Topkapi" museum. This is the part you should not miss. The robbery - starring Ustinov, Maximilian Schell (as William Walter) and "human fly" gymnast Gilles Ségal (as Giulio) - is excellent.******** Topkapi (9/2/64) Jules Dassin ~ Melina Mercouri, Peter Ustinov, Maximilian Schell, Gilles Segal

Richard Burin Topkapi (Jules Dassin, 1964) is among the highlights of the '60s caper-comedy boom, which also produced Charade, Gambit, Arabesque and How to Steal a Million. Helmed by Jules Dassin, the French filmmaker behind heist movie blueprint Rififi (with its legendary silent central set-piece - all 20 minutes of it), it's clever, stylistically showy and deliciously tongue-in-cheek. Maximillian Schell is the criminal mastermind who recruits a team of amateurs as he plots to steal a priceless emerald-studded dagger from an Istanbul museum. He's nicking it for Melina Mercouri, his nymphomaniac former lover, whose fondness for men is exceeded only by that passion for jewels. Schell's protegees include alarms expert Robert Morley, strongman Jess Hahn and human fly Gilles Segal, while whimpering, half-Egyptian tour guide Peter Ustinov and drunken servant Akim Tamiroff (one of the great character actors of the Golden Age, whose fans included Orson Welles) also buzz around. Ustinov's an unwilling plant for the cops, who thinks the group are terrorists. Tamiroff comes with the villa where they're staying; he's convinced they're "Russische spies". It takes a little while for the film's disparate pieces to slot into place, and the variety of European accents can be a struggle, but the second half is utterly superb, with a heist sequence that's tense, funny and mirth-inducingly ingenious, and a gem of an ending. Ustinov got an Oscar for his hilarious turn as the incompetent Arthur Simpson, but the whole ensemble does a neat job, and Tamiroff is very amusing as the bitter, suspicious, misguided, constantly slurring would-be informant. Particularly when he starts talking about fish.

Film_critic_Lalit_Rao We all know that a film can look good on paper as long as there are film fans who have not seen it.It is only by watching a particular film that a film fan is in a position to decide whether it is a masterpiece or a terrible piece of entertainment ? "Topkapi" is known as a brilliant heist film but film critic Lalit Rao could not really get to appreciate it as this film's lead players choose to spend their time in pursuing other pleasure activities instead of concentrating on their heist plans.It is due to this and other plot related inconsistencies that Topkapi can be considered as an absolutely weak effort by maestro of heist film genre Monsieur Jules Dassin.He is known to have made better films where action spoke louder than words. While watching "Topkapi",one can surely notice that there are too many nice views of Turkey.It is not known whether it was all intentionally relevant or director Jules Dassin wanted to achieve a kind of exotic nirvana in order to find spiritual enlightenment in Istanbul.It is due to these reasons that there are moments in this film where it appears as if it is nothing but a glamorous propaganda film made for Turkish government with a sole objective of giving a boost to local tourism industry.It is only for 20 minutes of its heist sequence that "Topkapi" is able to cement interest in viewers' minds.Alas,by that time viewers must surely have made up their mind to stop paying any attention to what is happening with the film.