Topaz or Exodus?

I prefer "Topaz," but that's largely because I am a Hitchcock fan. However, I have a great regard for Otto Preminger's "large canvas" period of 1959 -1967(Anatomy of a Murder, Exodus, Advise and Consent, The Cardinal, In Harm's Way, Hurry, Sundown) for their sweep and their even-handed treatment of controversial material, even for their "soap operetic touches."

Confession: I've never seen "The Cardinal" or "Hurry, Sundown," but from what I've read and what I remember, they definitely are of Preminger's "epic" period, and I probably would have liked them despite what I understand to be some horribly dated racial/sexual material in "Sundown"(but hey, Jane Fonda and Michael Caine...its gotta be interesting.)

"Anatomy of Murder" may not seem like an epic, but in its "small-town Americana way," it had quite the wide array of actors and characters: James Stewart, Lee Remick, Ben Gazzara, Eve Arden, Arthur O'Connell, and a new and stunning George C. Scott. Plus the lawyer from the McCarthy hearing.)

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"Topaz" likely was conceived as a novel Hitchcock WOULD NOT have filmed. By its very globe-trotting, sprawling, rather plotty nature, "Topaz" should have been a Preminger film, and likely with this kind of all-star cast:

Andre Yves Montand
Nicole: Catherine Denueve
Dubois: Sidney Poitier
Rico Parra: Burt Lancaster
Nordstrom: William Holden
"And Elizabeth Taylor as Juanita De Cordoba."

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Hitchcock didn't make THAT kind of film, and though he did try to get Denueve for Nicole, ultimately he went with a low-star wattage cast(Michel Piccoli and Phillipe Noiret, however, came with international film credentials.)

Hitchcock shaped "Topaz" to HIS purposes. He was interested not so much in the wide sweep of action as he was in his trademark close-up heavy set-pieces: the defector's daughter dropping the statue; Rico Parra's huge meaty hand on a doorknob right before he kicks it in to reveal DuBois and Uribe taking photos like pornographers; and of course the wonderful "death blooms" murder of a Cuban spy.

I'm a little too young to remember "Exodus" in book stores, but I do remember big displays for "Topaz" in books stores and "book departments of department stores." I was fulling expecting "Topaz" to become one of those "coffee table book epic movies" and I was stunned to learn of Hitchcock buying it for films.(Evidently so was Leon Uris, who was contractually required to get to write a first draft of the screenplay, and felt Hitchcock was all wrong for it. Hitchcock never used the Uris draft.)

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"Exodus" had a bigger budget than "Topaz," I'll bet(once inflation of 1960 versus 1969 dollars was made), and an all-star cast (Paul Newman and Eva Marie Saint AND Sal Mineo AND Lee J. Cobb AND Peter Lawford and on and on.)

Though Hitchocck did some on-location filming for "Topaz" in Copenhagen and Paris, a lot of the film has a "Universal backlot" feeling, and the Northern California coast filled in for Cuba exteriors.

"Exodus" had that required "superepic location filming" sweep to it -- the way a movie like that is "supposed" to be made.

"Exodus" merited Oscar nominations (the score, song and Sal Mineo at least, as I recall) and was given serious consideration by the Academy.

One hook that "Exodus" had in Hollywood that "Topaz" did not was the fact that "Exodus" was about the birth of Israel, which was, lets face it, an enormously important topic among a Hollywood set that had a large Jewish community. So, there, too "Exodus" was seen as more important than "Topaz."

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Put it all together and I would say that "Exodus" is a better film -- certainly a more starry and richly mounted one -- than "Topaz."

But "Topaz" gives us the rather impish delight of seeing Alfred Hitchcock given one of those "important modern epics" to film and gleefully turning it into a starless series of intense suspense set pieces.

Plus just ENOUGH "import" (all those intelligent meetings of intelligence personnel in a Virginia safe house and at NATO) to suggest that Hitchcock, too, was playing in a somewhat more high falutin' arena than he was used to.

Of Preminger's films, my favorites are in this order:

Anatomy of a Murder
Advise and Consent
In Harm's Way

A black-and-white trilogy of all-star tales about the "American way of power" in the courts, in Congress, and in war.

"Laura" is a nice noir, but I prefer Otto in his "big picture mode" of the 50's/60's.

And yes, I know that the ladies in "Harm's Way" where 1965 dresses and hairstyles during WWII, and that the thing is laden with sexy soap. But John Wayne and Kirk Douglas capture the cameraderie of different men at war with great style, the Wayne/Patricia Neal romance is mature yet sexual, and all those other players, from Burgess Meredith to Patrick O'Neal to Slim Pickens to Carroll O'Connor, are memorable.

P.S. Hitchcock made one comment on "Exodus," but not one you'd expect. Eva Marie Saint appeared in "North by Northwest" in 1959 and "Exodus" the next year.
Hitchcock told an interviewer. "Poor Eva Marie Saint. I go to all that trouble to make her sexy and glamourous for my movie, and there she is one year later in 'Exodus,' back to looking like a waif.'"