MovieChat Forums > Topaz (1969) Discussion > Interlocking Triangles

Interlocking Triangles

posted 19 years ago by ecarle
2 replies | jump to latest

LOTS OF SPOILERS

"Topaz" was the first movie that Alfred Hitchcock could make under the newly free ratings code. He didn't do much to use that code in this movie -- there is no cussing or sex or nudity (though he originally hoped to film Juanita de Cordoba topless for a love scene with Andre.)

But Hitch did use the "M" rating for one "morality breakthrough" with this movie, which is, as usual with Hitchcock, a matter of structure:

Cheating spouses in interlocking romantic triangles.

Romantic triangles were nothing new to Hitchcock. It creates nice conflict and romantic suspense for two men to love the same woman (Cary Grant and Claude Rains with Ingrid Bergman in "Notorious," Cary Grant and James Mason with Eva Marie Saint in "North by Northwest") or for two women to love the same man (Grace Kelly and Brigitte Auber with Cary Grant in "To Catch a Thief", Diane Baker and -- kind of -- Tippi Hedren with Sean Connery in "Marnie.")

But "Topaz" had multiple interlocking triangles, and, in an "M" rated twist for Hitchcock, two of them involved cheating spouses.

Here are the triangles:

Nicole-Andre-Juanita

Andre-Juanita-Rico Parra

Andre-Nicole-Granville

"Topaz" is the first Hitchcock movie in which the hero is cheating on his wife -- and his wife pretty much knows it. THAT was a breakthrough in a 1969 movie. Ten years earlier, Andre would be villainous for cheating on his wife (think: Fred MacMurray in The Apartment.) Here, he is still portrayed as a hero, even as he meanly tells his wife of Juanita "You are never to use that name here! She is simply a contact, nothing more!"

In Cuba, its pretty clear that Juanita has something going with Rico Parra. When Andre asks Juanita about Rico's presence in Juanita's home: "Is he collecting the rent?" Juanita answers "How's your wife?" Thus do the two lovers exchange the knowledge that they must love more than one person to make it in this spy's ife.

Finally, of course, Nicole elects to cheat on Andre with Granville, and comes to be shocked to find that Granville is the traitor.

If you link all the triangles together, it looks like this:

Granville-Nicole-Andre-Juanita-Rico Parra

Mathematical, Hitchcock's films sometimes are!

Dramatically, Hitchcock ends two of the triangles by killing one side each: Juanita is killed, Granville kills himself. This opens the door to Nicole and Andre reconciling.

Interestingly, the two endings for "Topaz" not shown in its original American release have Andre and Nicole together at film's end. (1) Granville is killed in stadium duel; Nicole rushes up to embrace Andre in the tunnel. (2) Granville flies off to Russia, Andre and Nicole wave goodbye to him from the plane they are boarding to the US.

The "US ending" (Granville shoots himself off-screen) at least suggested that Andre and Nicole would get together again at the end, but we didn't see it.

Anyway, though nobody paid much notice, the romantic triangles in "Topaz" were marvelously interwoven by Hitchcock in his usual structural manner, and a "cheating husband hero" was a definite screen breakthrough for the sixties.

[–] skl2003 18 years ago

Interesting observations.

I've always enjoyed Topaz, though I'm not entirely sure why. It is unusual for the hero to be an adulterer. I would say that no one in Topaz, except perhaps John Forsythe's character, is particularly sympathetic for the audience. This is perhaps part of what many people fin objectionable about it, but also, I think, part of its appeal.

The "interlocking triangles" you identified remind me of Family Plot's "converging storylines". Hitchcock seems almost to have developed a geometrical technique for plotting films. Perhaps the geometry of a film can itself present a kind of aesthetic beauty to the audience.

[–] ecarle 18 years ago

I think structure and converging storylines mattered to Hitchcock a lot. You can "feel" the structure in his films, because its so carefully laid out, and not just in a three-act way. "Psycho" famously starts as one story and turns into another, but the two stories have parallels in "going mad sometimes."

Hitchcock indeed rather removed "sympathy" from a lot of his characters in later films, from at least "Marnie" on, I would suggest. It's why his late films have a certain "cool" quality.