The Worst Film Ever

That was an excellent one.

Thanks for the memories!

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Okay, it had some nice travel-porn and Peter Ustinov absolutely transcends the material here (he was the best thing in this)...but this flick is screaming out for a glamorous remake. Nothing too slick and I don't want everyone in the remake to be gorgeous but seriously...it needs a remake. Also, my husband came up with a much better ending than the one here.So...nice scenery, including a ridiculously good-looking Max Schell, but Ms. Mercouri nearly ruined this movie. She was just too weird. Was she supposed to be alluring? I just found her to be scary looking and I couldn't believe these guys would be falling all over her. I don't mean to be catty...I'm actually older than she was when she made this film but I'm still calling her out on being a little too witch- like. That voice! Like a much-later Lucille Ball after a couple of packs of cigarettes. Puh-leeze.

It's been many decades since Topkapi or the wonder of Peter O'Toole and that apogee of chic herself Audrey Hepburn delighted us in How to Steal a Million. These are exceedingly clever movies starring very attractive people wearing seriously good clothes while hanging out in exotic and/or luxurious locations and driving autos as erotic as the white Lincoln suicide-door convertible in Topkapi or Peter O'T.'s mint XKE sportster. Hey, life was good! Not only that, the dialogue was witty and multi-leveled. I'd forgotten the homoerotic subtext in Topkapi, made pretty damn explicit in the Turkish Wrestler sequence, which is not even remotely gay, but definitely hot, and a hoot, to boot! Observe Melina Mercouri struggle to contain herself watching the big oiled-up dudes in leather pants writhe about as the Turkish secret police are equally preoccupied. We're almost talking NC-17, but happily Topkapi predates that absurdist system. Most contemporary comedies—even the dominant gross-out variety—seem old-maidish by comparison. Both mastermind Maximilian Schell (never more handsome) and the hunky gymnast Gilles Ségal flirt with everybody in sight irrespective of gender. Even the bumbling, Oscar-collecting "schmo" Peter Ustinov gets an ardent male admirer. Nor is there a whiff of homophobia to dampen the mood. It may have been 1964, but these people are way more hip and sophisticated than, say, George Clooney, to cite a typical example from the current talent pool.Gilles Ségal never speaks a word in the English language Topkapi, yet he deftly steers clear of mime's clichés for an eloquent performance. Albeit unknown in the States, he's terrific, yet but one of many pleasures in this classic of the caper genre. The formidable Melina Mercouri usually gets all the attention, and very true: movie stars of the stratospheric Sophia Loren variety have vanished from the cinematic heavens. Still, it's the men who not only pull off the heist, but likewise effortlessly do the heavy lifting that keeps this picture as satisfying as good champagne.Here's a conversational gambit for a phellow philm phreak: How would you cast the remake? What about your choice for a director? I'd say Topkapi is at least as ripe as Ocean's 11 for a revisit. Just don't give Clooney the Maximillian Schell role. For one, he's too old, and for another, it really should be a Euro. How about Nicolas Cazalé? Or Jean Dujardin was brilliant in the OSS-117 spoofs, which hardly anybody saw outside of France or pre-Artist. Then again, Tom Hardy seems like he can do anything, especially a slightly dangerous sexuality.I'm stumped, though on the Melina Mercouri, and my best guess so far is Angelina Jolie. Don't snicker. She was amazing in Salt.

This was a good movie except for the awful lead female. For at least 3/4 of the movie we were going "it's a guy in drag". Seriously, even in the 1960s sexy was sexy, but in this trans-gender casting we just couldn't tell. The story is good, maybe even very good, the script is OK, the score good and the cinematography excellent. Some of the more American actors grate but hey!, that's Americans for you. So, overall, this could have been a classic 60's movie. The miscasting of Ms X was a fatal flaw. We're sorry, but it's just not good enough. And it wasn't back then either. Why IMDb needs 10 lines I don't know, after all it's supposed to be a review not a step-by-step analysis of each and every scene in the movie.

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.