The name Peter Sellers is likely to conjure any number of images for the cinephile, such as the lunatic, titular nuclear enthusiast in Dr. Strangelove desperately trying not to giggle while ad-libbing his character’s struggle to ward away his desire to give a Nazi salute in the film’s final moments. Sellers was a comedic genius and nearly always the center of gravity in any film he acted in. His one directorial credit helming a feature film, then, must bear the weight of certain expectations. If you put that madcap surrealist in charge, what kind of film would you get?
With that baggage coming into it, Mr. Topaze cannot but disappoint. It is a staid film, subdued even in its most climatic sequences. It is funny at times, but not with the insane abandon of Dr. Strangelove or several other iconic Sellers efforts. The film is based on a French play from the ‘20s, was thoroughly despised upon release in the UK in 1961 and is only now getting published far and wide because of Sellers’ attempt to destroy all the existing prints of it. The film is not terrible, or even bad, but it certainly disappoints with its milquetoast tone and contained style.
Sellers, in addition to directing, plays the eponymous role of Mr. Topaze, a French teacher notorious for his unimpeachable integrity. He is literally honest to a fault, to the point of losing his teaching position because of his refusal to change the grade of a student with a powerful heritage. Because of his famous uprightness, Topaze is targeted as the rube/front man for a conman who needs a respectable buffoon to unknowingly launder his ill-gotten fortune. Topaze eventually catches on to the scheme, but too late to take action against the conman, for he has fully implicated himself in the law-breaking, however unwittingly. The climax of Mr. Topaze involves two separate scenes – one where Topaze confronts the conman and another where he converses with a former colleague at the school where he used to teach. In both, he reveals that he is a new man, world-wise and maybe not so honest as his reputation would suggest.
As a film, Mr. Topaze is more disappointing than bad. It is a straightforward morality play committed to the screen, with good acting to carry the story. But this is Peter Sellers! And he is simply not his energetic, magnetic self here. He is too straight, beginning the film as a stick-in-the-mud and ending it as a changed man, but he is restrained throughout, even when being fired by the school or cheated by the conman. His direction completely lacks visual flair, with all of the framing, staging and editing being as standard as can be; any anonymous director could have helmed Mr. Topaze. The set design and costumes are equally neutral and the colors in the film are an ugly combination of gray, brown and yellow-green. The script is the major shortcoming here, as the material never quite coalesces in a way for the cynical final scenes to feel organic to the characters; it is too much of a gotcha conclusion. For any Sellers fanatic, Mr. Topaze will be worthwhile; for everyone else, it is eminently missable.
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