Once-blacklisted director Jules Dassin was rediscovered last year thanks to a theatrical reissue of his gritty 1955 heist picture Rififi, and the film's subsequent release on a sharp DVD. The time would seem right for a similar celebration of Dassin's frothier 1964 caper Topkapi, but MGM's DVD version arrives shabbily prepared. The disc sports no special features beyond the original trailer, and the digital transfer comes from a muddy-looking print with wildly fluctuating color values. About the best thing that can be said about the Topkapi DVD is that the price is attractively low, and that beneath the layer of dinginess lies sparkling entertainment. Greek sexpot Melina Mercouri stars as a dreamy-eyed jewel thief who recruits master tactician Maximilian Schell and can-do gadgeteer Robert Morley to help her lift an emerald-encrusted scabbard from a Turkish museum. The team fills itself out with a strongman and an acrobat from the circus, and with hapless grifter Peter Ustinov, initially hired as a driver and kept in the dark about the crime until circumstances force him to become a more active participant. The Turkish authorities, who monitor Mercouri's suspicious crew, target the clueless Ustinov as a source for inside information, and are consequently led on an amusingly circuitous path. Unlike Rififi, which began as a plotty French noir and evolved into an often brutal sketch of the criminal life, Topkapi never develops into anything more than a collection of interesting faces in an exotic locale. Dassin favorite (and real-life lover) Mercouri comes off more creepy than seductive, but Ustinov's Oscar-winning supporting performance continues to generate the proper mix of laughs, sympathy, and exasperation. The film builds to the thievery, laid out in an ingenious but not entirely foolproof plan, which hits a few snags. Dassin's elaborate heist sequences in Rififi and Topkapi have been referenced so often that it wouldn't be surprising if they had lost some effectiveness. But they still crackle, which is a tribute to Dassin's skill, a virtue that survives even the crummiest presentation.