Topkapi

Director: Jules Dassin

1964 / 120min / 35mm

After practically defining the modern heist film with his Paris-set Rififi, American expat Dassin set out to one-up—and make light of—his own triumph, adapting an Eric Ambler novel (The Light of Day) into a spoof suspenser about a crack team of crooks, led by Greek national treasure Melina Mercouri, as they conspire to relieve the Topkapi Palace Museum in Istanbul of Sultan Mahmud I’s priceless emerald-encrusted dagger. Contains all of the cinematic swagger of its predecessor in its set pieces, but with twice the laughs, many of these courtesy Peter Ustinov, playing a small-time chiseler recruited to Mercouri’s band of ragtag misfits, and arrives in a dazzling print of the new restoration courtesy The Film Foundation.

Photochemical restoration by The Film Foundation in collaboration with Metro Goldwyn Mayer Studios Inc. Funding provided by the Golden Globe Foundation. Special thanks to Christopher Nolan and Emma Thomas.