Topaz: 1962 through a 1969 Lens

I've been away from this thread for awhile but I definitely enjoyed reading some of the opinions expressed here since.

For men at least, the clothing and hairstyles from about 1967 to about 1982 were part of a wild "sixties-seventies explosion" that seems now to have been a once-in-a-century experience.

Men in short haircuts with suits and ties are staples of
The 20's
The 30's
The 40's
The 50's
The 60's through 1966

The 80's
The 90's
The 00's
Now

But given all the "revolutionary change" of the 60's, there seems to have been this hiccup of long hair, sideburns(if you could grown them), and suits with big wide lapels and big wide ties and big wide cuffs("bell-bottoms" or "flairs") and it was so radical that it had to mean SOMETHING. (In the black male community, we saw those huge Afros that look so amusing now in movies like "Austin Powers in Goldmember.") Eventually, fashion backed away to "classic styles" -- and male hair got shorter, suits and ties got classic, etc.

As he prepared to make "Topaz," Hitchcock eschewed those styles(very much on view indeed in the very good "President's Analyst") and was able to "go back in time" to 1962, and male styles which had been in place for decades.

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With "Frenzy"(and I remember enjoying this at the time), Hitchcock finally acknowledged the sixties/seventies period: Bob Rusk and Richard Blaney both had long hair; Rusk had big sideburns and Blaney had a moustache; Rusk's suits were not "ultra-mod" seventies loud, but they WERE stylish and flared. And I loved it.

Now of course...but just barely...Rusk and Blaney in "Frenzy" look a bit too much, too seventies. (As do Bruce Dern with a huge head of Bozo-ish red hair and William Devane with long hair, moustache and flared suit in "Family Plot.")

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While "Topaz" was actually set in 1962, "Frenzy" was set in 1972 and highly criticized for how Hitchocck had somehow re-created the London of years before(if not his youth, perhaps the 30's and 40's) in the emphasis on certain Cockney phrases, a Covent Garden marketplace of worker bees, and a decided lack of notice for the politics or racial changes of the time.

I'm not so sure. "Frenzy" may have reflected "the world of Hitchcock's imagination," but we no movies with the sexual content and language of "Frenzy" in the years prior to censorship code changes in 1968..."Frenzy" is a very modern (and UGLY modern) movie to me.

The idea that "Frenzy" might make more sense in the early 60's is borne by the fact that the novel appeared in 1966 and seemed to be set a year or two earlier. Crucially, the Richard Blaney of the book(called Richard Blamey) is a 50-something veteran of WWII, not a 30-something Jon Finch being "streeeeccched" to have served in the mid-fifties Suez Canal skirmishes. "Frenzy" ends up feeling wrong in time principally(IMHO) in the castng of too-young Jon Finch in the lead(Hitchcock had first offered the role to the more age-appropriate Richard Burton.)

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Maybe if "Topaz" had been a fully realized Hitchcock classic, it would not have taken the hits it took in 1969 for casting Castro's men as the villains along with some Communist turncoats in Paris. But Hitchcock's timing was off: "revolutionary youth" were wearing Che Guevera T-shirts and there was little critical patience with a movie that made the Communists the enemy in 1969."

Still, Hitchcock held his ground...against military totalitarianism. I find it interesting that Rico Parra and his men in Harlem are all in their military fatigues. Castro's takeover was a very MILITARY operation and it remains intriguing to me that a lot of film critics of 1969 seemed to have a liking for dicatorship and military domination. After all, what could be more satisfying than making your political enemies DIE and submit to prison or servitude.

Hitchcock is as even-handed as he can bewhen Rico and Juanita have their final, fatal talk as he embraces her(paraphrased)

Rico: Why do you betray us?
Juanita: For turning my country into a prison.
Rico: You have no right to judge.

Prison? Freedom? The rich versus "the people"? Its all relative.

Even today.

Hitchcock noted in his late days that for making "Torn Curtain" and "Topaz" and making the Communists his villains, he was an "Enemy of the State" in the Soviet Union and its sattelites. He feared flying because of possible hijackings to Cuba or, if he were flying in Europe, to Russia. So he paid a price.