Mr. Topaze

Founded in 2002 as one of the first-ever subscription film services with its DVD-of-the-Month Film Club, Film Movement is now a North American distributor of award-winning independent and foreign films based in New York City. In 2015, Film Movement launched the reissue label Film Movement Classics featuring new restorations released theatrically as well as on home video, with an emphasis on films by auteur directors such as Eric Rohmer, Peter Greenaway and Takeshi Kitano.

Unwilling to sacrifice his principles, Albert Topaze (Peter Sellers), a poor but proud French schoolmaster, loses his job after he refuses to alter the failing grades of one of students. Seizing the opportunity to exploit his well-known honesty, actress Suzy Courtois (Nadia Gray) convinces her lover, the corrupt city council member Castel Benac (Herbert Lom), to hire Topaze as a managing director for one of his shady businesses. But when Topaze learns he is being used, he cunningly turns the tables on Benac and makes off with all the money.

Seller’s first and only credited directorial feature, MR. TOPAZE displays the British comic genius at the peak of his powers alongside his future Pink Panther nemesis Herbert Lom and a stellar supporting cast that includes Nadia Gray, Leo McKern, Billie Whitelaw and Michael Gough. Long considered a “lost” classic, MR. TOPAZE was digitally restored at the request of the British public from the last known surviving 35mm prints held in the BFI National Archive.

directed by: Peter Sellers
starring: Peter Sellers, Nadia Gray, Herbert Lom, Leo McKern, Michael Gough, Billie Whitelaw, John Le Mesurier
1961 / 97 min / 2.35:1 / English Mono

Additional info:

• Region Free Blu-ray
• Let’s Go Crazy (1951) – a madcap short film starring Peter Sellers and his Goon Show co-star Spike Milligan
• The Poetry of Realism (2019) – Kat Ellinger video essay on auteur Marcel Pagnol, the playwright of Topaze
• Abigail McKern Interview (2019) – Leo McKern’s daughter discusses her father’s life and career
• 24-page booklet with notes on the film’s rediscovery by BFI curator Vic Pratt and a new essay by Roger Lewis, author of The Life and Death of Peter Sellers