Alfred Hitchcock's "Topaz" was unpopular and quickly forgotten about, largely because he dared to do something that most filmmakers avoided: make a realistic movie about espionage. "Topaz" has none of the glamour or excitement of the James Bond pictures nor does it even have much of a happy ending. The master spy Davereaux (Frederick Stafford) uses and gratuitously sacrifices the lives of his underlings to uncover information that merely serves to confirm other spy information that the Americans have already gathered. Davereaux appears to find his job particularly distasteful, but at the same time he goes ahead with his mission with a stoicism that could easily be confused for coldness. If you consider Davereaux's demeanour at the end of the picture and the flashback to all the casualties that he leaves behind, you'll see what I mean.
So "Topaz" is an austere and dark film. The brief torture scene has to be one of the most brutal moments ever depicted in any of Hitchcock's films, which for all their suspense usually spare the audience the horror of having to see uncompromising, graphic violence (Psycho and Frenzy, of course, are important exceptions). Lastly "Topaz" is also a surprisingly realistic film, in that the spies do not lead happy, glamorous lives, but are forced to perform very distasteful tasks that would drive a normal, decent person to despair.
So "Topaz" is an austere and dark film. The brief torture scene has to be one of the most brutal moments ever depicted in any of Hitchcock's films, which for all their suspense usually spare the audience the horror of having to see uncompromising, graphic violence (Psycho and Frenzy, of course, are important exceptions). Lastly "Topaz" is also a surprisingly realistic film, in that the spies do not lead happy, glamorous lives, but are forced to perform very distasteful tasks that would drive a normal, decent person to despair.