Topaz

Topaz is a 1969 American espionage thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Based on the 1967 novel of the same title by Leon Uris, the film is about a French intelligence agent (Stafford) who becomes entangled in Cold War politics before the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and then the breakup of an international Soviet spy ring. The story is loosely based on the 1962 Sapphire Affair, which involved the head of France's SDECE in the United States, the spy Philippe Thyraud de Vosjoli, a friend of Uris, who played an important role in "helping the U.S. discover the presence of Russian offensive missiles in Cuba." Plot In Copenhagen in 1962, a high-ranking Soviet intelligence officer, Boris Kusenov, defects to the West. During debriefing, CIA agent Mike Nordstrom learns that Soviet missiles with nuclear warheads will be placed in Cuba. Needing physical evidence, Nordstrom discloses Kusenov's name to French agent André Devereaux and asks him to bribe Luis Uribe, a member of Cuba's UN delegation, to provide photographs of documents that confirm the missile bases in Cuba. Devereaux decides to accompany his daughter, Michèle, on her honeymoon to New York City with his son-in-law, François Picard.