"I have been but little in," said Ninian hastily...

Reading a SciF/Fantasy book review, I came across this passage.

It’s a literary trope that does exist outside the sf genre, but it’s much harder to find, and in my mind at least is rarely as viscerally satisfying.

Is it just me, or do others feel this betrays the reviewer's astounding lack of familiarity with much of mainstream literature? It seems as if just this sort of self-realisation is a terrifically common part of modern fiction, from Charles Dickens to JD Salinger to Jhumpa Lahiri.

My viewing entertainment this evening was the 1964 film Topkapi, a classic jewel-robbery film with a stellar cast, based on a novel by Eric Ambler.

The introduction is rather odd, but the movie drew me in very quickly. It features a very staccato style of dialogue, with some dry wit and irony. The shooting style is also very engaging (to me), with a lot of what I can only describe as small action. In other words, a great deal is shown with quick shots and cuts, but there's some subtlety, some "watch carefully or you may miss something" feel. I wasn't surprised to find that the director, Jules Dassin, was an assistant to Hitchock at one point--it has a Hitchcock flavour to it. Even when you know (you think?) that they have to be able to get away with the heist, the process of the actual theft had me on the edge of my seat, tense lest something slip at a delicate moment.

Characters sometimes convey as much with gestures and facial expressions as with words. There's a lot of local colour (the exterior filming took place, in fact, where the film is set, in Istanbul). Speaking of colour, it's almost more engaging for being late Technicolor--that (along with some rather dated visual effects and camera work) gives it a period feel that's very pleasing in a retro way.

My parents, especially my mum, loved Peter Ustinov, and he does a great job in this film--he reminds me of a John Le Carre character is his shambolic, apologetic, "bastard sons of the late Empire" manner. Maximillian Schell is super as the brains behind the plan; Robert Morley is the tinkerer who comes up with their technical gear. Melina Mercouri is the mercurial motive force behind the heist, vibrant, flirtatious, eccentric.

I enjoyed it tremendously and gave it four stars on Netflix. It made me want to see more films by this director, more films with these actors. And the location shots reinforced my (strong) desire to travel to Turkey some day.