Sat 16 May 2009
Movie Review: HOTEL RESERVE (1944).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , Suspense & espionage films[38] Comments
HOTEL RESERVE. RKO Radio Pictures-UK, 1944. James Mason, Lucie Mannheim, Julien Mitchell, Herbert Lom, Clare Hamilton, Frederick Valk, Raymond Lovell, Patricia Medina. Based on the novel Epitaph for a Spy by Eric Ambler. Directors: Lance Comfort, Max Greene (Mutz Greenbaum), Victor Hanbury.
There must be a well-known rule of thumb, something like Murphy’s Law except that I don’t know the name, that when a movie has three directors, it’s not very good. While there are some good moments in Hotel Reserve, it’s no exception to prove the rule.
I don’t think it was the author’s fault. Back in the 1950s when I first started reading “grown-up” mysteries, Eric Ambler was one of my favorite authors. His spy novels written in the 1940s were wonderfully descriptive and intense, filled with ordinary citizens getting into the most intricate plots — and all the better, finding their way out.
I’ll have to re-read them sometime. Perhaps they won’t hold up or match my memories, but I think they will. In Hotel Reserve it is a man named Peter Vadassy (James Mason), an intense medical student who’s half-Austrian and half-French and anxiously awaiting his French naturalization papers, who gets into trouble during a short vacation at a French seaside resort, circa 1939.
It seems that someone accidentally used his camera to take some photographs of a defense installation, and the police, particularly intelligence chief Michel Beghin (Julien Mitchell) are not amused. Although he knows Vadassy to be innocent, he sends him back to the hotel to find the real culprit, under the threat of deportation if he fails.
The set-up is fine. This had all the signs of a pretty good amateur detective story, but what follows instead is a mish-mash of comedy and inept B-movie clunks on the head and angry confrontations.
The other vacationers are difficult to keep track of — who’s who and why they’re there — even Vadassy’s would-be girl friend, Mary Skelton (Clare Hamilton).
That the latter is surprisingly wooden in both attitude and delivery is explained by the fact that this is the only movie she ever made. (It is claimed by several sources that Clare Hamilton was the sister of Maureen O’Hara; at least one person leaving comments on IMDB is not so sure.)
If you read through the list of the cast that I provided above — I didn’t list them all, as most of them have very small parts — and assuming that you recognize some of the names, you may pick out the true culprit(s) rather easily.
James Mason, alas, didn’t have that luxury. He does well in the part, frightfully earnest to the end, but he’s undone by an indifferent script, a ludicrous ending, and three directors, none of whom can be compared to, say, a certain Mr Hitchcock, except badly.
May 16th, 2009 at 11:52 pm
Well, this just goes to show why we all watch and love old movies. The infinite variety and our personal likes and dislikes makes for very interesting arguments and differences of opinion. I liked everything about HOTEL RESERVE and found it to be full of interesting characters. I loved the pre war atmosphere and the setting of the hotel. James Mason showed enough star magnetism for us to understand his future success in movies.
It was my second viewing of the movie and I decided to watch it again after reading the favorable review in the BRITISH FILM NOIR GUIDE by Michael F. Keaney. He says “Solid performances by Mason and Lom highlight this interesting espionage thriller, which climaxes in an exciting rooftop chase.”
My comments when I last viewed it in April 2009 are scribbled on the back of the bootleg dvd sleeve, “Not really film noir but a highly enjoyable mystery and spy melodrama. Takes place in a hotel with Mason hunting for a spy among the 10 suspects.”
May 17th, 2009 at 12:28 am
You’re entirely right, Walker. No two people are going to agree on everything. The enjoyment you describe in watching this movie is almost enough to make me want to watch it again, and maybe I should.
The key word here is “almost.” There are some good scenes in this movie, but let’s take the ending, which — dare I say it? — is silly.
With all of the policemen around — OK, some are wounded — why it is that Vadassy is the only one around to confront the villain in the big finale? (Why is he even there in the first place?)
A villain who goes way over the top in overacting, and over the edge, too.
I like the idea of an everyday man getting caught up in a mess of trouble he has no business getting into, and working his way out. It’s one of my favorite story lines when it comes to spy fiction.
Maybe the best example of this is NORTH BY NORTHWEST, which this movie isn’t, but on the other hand, very few other movies are.
For the record: I went to IMDB and checked out the reactions of the eight people who left comments. Five favorable, one mixed, and two negative.
Long pause while I think about it. Maybe it’s not that I thought the movie was so bad. It’s just that I think it could have been so much better.
— Steve
May 17th, 2009 at 8:50 am
Maybe it’s the insane whacky comedy elements that are causing the problem with some viewers. I found just about every character was acting in an absurd and almost screwball manner. I say almost because the comedy was subtle but definitely present. At least for me it was enjoyable, even the silly ending.
May 17th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
The secret auteur of this film is Joseph Losey (Victor Hanbury).
May 17th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
Clark
That’s an interesting suggestion, but the more I’ve looked into it (this morning), the more it looks as though Victor Hanbury was a real person whose name Losey borrowed when he ran into Red Scare problems.
From ScreenOnline:
http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/451119/
“Although credited at the time to Victor Hanbury, an undistinguished B-picture filmmaker, The Sleeping Tiger (1954) was, in fact, the first British film of Joseph Losey, whose promising Hollywood career had been cut short when he was blacklisted during the McCarthy era. Working from a script by fellow blacklisted American exiles Carl Foreman and Harold Buchman (who were also compelled to take a pseudonym, ‘Derek Frye’, to conceal their identities), Losey persuaded the hugely popular Dirk Bogarde to star in this low budget thriller by showing him one of his most impressive American films, The Prowler (1950) as a calling card.”
Victor Hanbury’s IMDB credits as a director go back to 1931, while Losey was born in 1909, with his Hollywood career beginning circa 1939.
— Steve
May 17th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
Walker
What our disagreement on this movie tells me is that I have to read the book again.
I remember it as totally serious, but since I could easily be wrong about that, maybe I was wrong in expecting a little more subtlety in the comedy elements!
— Steve
May 17th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
This was made in 1944, well before Losey’s Hollywood career, which began in ’48. As I recall, Losey had been doing WPA theater. I know Mutz Greenbaum was the uncredited cinematogropher. Perhaps Losey used his name. I suspect in this case Losey didn’t have the right creds to do British films. I am basing my guess on stylistic evidence — camera angles, etc. I just feel that the style, the theatrical aspect, is Losey’s. I think it was film apprentice work to get experience before transitioning from theatre. Whatever name he used, if you know Losey’s later work, you recognize the style. That’s what raises the film above its apparent weaknesses.
May 17th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
Clark
You may be on to something here, and it bothered me even when I left my earlier reply. Losey wouldn’t have borrowed Hanbury’s name in 1954 if there hadn’t been some connection between them before.
And if you’re right, one of those connections could have been HOTEL RESERVE.
It looks more and more as though I’m going to have to watch the movie again!
— Steve
May 17th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
For those of you who might be interested in reading more about Joseph Losey, whose success as a direct career was very uneven, Clark sent me a link to a website that I think you’ll find as illuminating as I did:
http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/03/losey.html
May 17th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
I fall somewhere between Walker and Steve on the film. I wasn’t that impressed the first time I saw it, but liked it better the second time out, and appreciated it for what it was. I’ll grant Joseph Losey’s participation adds to its interest, but Losey was a very uneven director — as a viewing of Modesty Blaise will tell you.
I don’t think there is any real danger of Hotel Reserve being noir. Every black and white film with spies, murder, or crime made in the period isn’t noir, and just because we like the film doesn’t mean we can claim it for the genre. Mask for Dimitrios directed by Jean Negulesco (with a Frank Gruber script) is much closer, and it isn’t noir either, and Raoul Walsh’s Background to Danger doesn’t make the cut. Norman Foster’s (and Orson Welles) Journey Into Fear does though. It’s subjective to some extent, but not subjective enough to qualify Hotel Reserve. Really, if we are going to call Hotel Reserve noir we will have to go back and include Bob Hope films like My Favorite Blonde and They’ve Got Me Covered and Danny Kaye films like Knock On Wood and On the Double.
Epitaph For a Spy is the weakest of Ambler’s novels and indeed he considered keeping it out of print like his first novel The Dark Frontier(which he eventually allowed to be reprinted), but was persuaded to let it stand. He wasn’t overly fond of it though, and always a little dismissive of it.
Of the famous five pre-war novels (Background to Danger, A Coffin For Dimitrios, Journey Into Fear, Cause for Alarm the others), Epitaph is the weakest and the least important. That’s not to say it is bad, but only fairly minor Ambler. In some ways a preview of things to come. Really, Background to Danger is only a little better, and probably only because it introduces the brother and sister Soviet agents that reoccur in other Ambler novels. Ambler liked it a little better than Epitaph, but still considered it minor work.
That said, even minor Ambler is worth reading, and the one he with held from publication (The Dark Frontier) turned out to be well worth reading — even Ambler found it better than he remembered. Graham Greene never relented on his first novel, Name of the Action, which remains one of the hardest books to find of all time, even though screen scenarios and other minor works have been released since his death.
Since we are discussing Ambler and lost works, does anyone know if the question of whether there was a film of his novel State of Siege (aka The Night-Comers) has ever been solved? Hubin lists a 1959 Rank prodution but adds a note the films existence is not confirmed. Over the years I’ve heard that it does and doesn’t exist, so I’d be curious of anyone knows for certain. It’s as elusive as that rumored Cliff Robertson Nick Carter Killmaster film — which, if memory serves, turned out not to exist. To further muddy the waters there is the 1972 Michael Winner prequel to Henry James Turn of the Screw, The Nightcomers, and Costa-Gravas 1973 thriller State of Siege (no relation) with Yves Montand. There’s also Guns of Darkness (Anthony Asquith, 1963 with David Niven) based on Francis Clifford’s Act of Mercy that has a similar setting and plot elements, and the William Holden film The 7th Dawn that also has similar elements. If the film does exist it’s certainly obscure. IMDB doesn’t list it.
Epitaph for a Spy was adapted twice for British television as a serial (1953 six episodes and 1963 three episodes) and on the CBS anthology series Climax!(1954)which also did Journey Into Fear, Chandler’s The Long Goodbye (with Dick Powell) and Casino Royale that same year.
May 17th, 2009 at 8:27 pm
Without knowing the facts at all, the idea that Losey was working in Britain under a pseudonym in 1944 is startling. The whole idea seems new. Is this really true? Books like LOSEY ON LOSEY don’t back this up at all…
I’ve only seen a small fraction of Losey’s work. He did a fine episode of CRIME DOES NOT PAY, a short called A GUN IN HIS HAND (1945). This was at MGM. Then, I think the crime story THE LAWLESS (1950) is outstanding. From there, the next Losey I’ve been able to see is the fine British suspense tale / serious drama mix, TIME WITHOUT PITY (1956). These could all be considered film noir.
Among the late Losey’s, all dramas (no crime or noir) I liked BOOM!, THE GO-BETWEEN and A DOLL’S HOUSE.
Losey’s best work is visually creative.
May 17th, 2009 at 8:35 pm
Mike
Here is how things stand, I believe. If someone would like to correct me, please do.
That Losey was somehow involved with the production end of HOTEL RESERVE is a plausible hypothesis, given some sort of connection between Losey and Victor Hanbury.
Clark goes a step further and calls it a theory, based on what he calls stylistic evidence. That’s as far as things have gotten. Nothing factual has been established, only some conjectures, and how solid they are, I’m not sure.
There may be nothing to the idea, or a lot.
— Steve
May 17th, 2009 at 11:14 pm
The Go Between was a fine adaptation of L.P. Hartley’s novel, but Boom is one of the most pretentious wastes of talent I can imagine, with Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Noel Coward, and Tennesse Williams, whose play it is based on, all shamefully bad. Compared to that his Modesty Blaise at least looks good.
Trevor Howard is fine in A Doll’s House, and Losey’s direction capable, but Jane Fonda’s interpretation of Ibsen by way of Gloria Steinhem is at best forgotten. Not her finest moment.
The Lawless was more interesting as a social comment than a movie, but Time Without Pity is a near masterpiece with one of Michael Redgrave’s finest performances.
The Boy With Green Hair, M, The Big Night (based on Stanley Ellin’s novel), The Sleeping Tiger (as Hanbury), The Concrete Jungle, These Are the Damned (a fascinating if flawed science fiction allegory), The Servant (based on a novel by Robin Maugham, Somerset’s nephew), King and Country, Accident, Secret Ceremony, The Romantic Englishwoman,and Mr. Klein are all good, in some cases great films. Boom, Modesty Blaise, The Assassination Of Trotsky, Trout, and Steaming disappointing to pretentious and even bad, and The Doll’s House interesting, but a misfire thanks to Fonda (who is usually quite good).
I’m willing to grant Losey could have directed the Hanbury third of Hotel Reserve, but I don’t see any evidence one way or the other for it. I don’t see anything in the film that demonstrates any exceptional talent one way or the other. It’s not as good as the best of Losey or as bad as the worst. It’s not like Journey Into Fear or The Thing From Another World where the obvious influence of Orson Welles and Howard Hawks makes it fairly obvious.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but frankly I can’t tell what parts of Gone With the Wind were directed by George Cukor and what by Victor Fleming any more than I can tell what scenes F. Scott Fitzgerald worked on unless I’ve read about them somewhere else. I’ve seen Macao a dozen times and I have no idea what was directed by Von Sternberg and what by Nicholas Ray.
I like Hotel Reserve, but see nothing in it that suggests a special directorial hand, but it’s certainly possible.
May 17th, 2009 at 11:36 pm
BOOM! was a huge box office flop, as I understand it, and viewers seemed to either hate it or love it on its own terms.
Here are the first couple of paragraphs from Robert Ebert’s review:
“There are different kinds of bad movies. Some are simply wretchedly bad, like well, you know. Others are bad but fascinating and Boom! is one of these.
“It isn’t successful, it doesn’t work, but so much money and brute energy were lavished on the production that it’s fun to sit there and watch.
“Being so awkward and hopeless on its most fundamental level, this is a film for voyeurs.”
I guess you could call that a mixed review.
As for Losey’s directorial techniques and abilities, I don’t believe I’ve seen any of his other films, so in terms of his involvement in making HOTEL RESERVE, I’ll have to plead ignorance.
— Steve
Added later: When I wrote the above, I’d temporarily forgotten THE SERVANT, which I saw when I was a relatively naive 21. I haven’t seen it since. Maybe I’m ready for it now.
May 18th, 2009 at 12:02 am
All film buffs should have a multi region dvd player so that they are not locked into only playing North American dvds. If you have such a player then amazon.co.uk has a Joseph Losey box set collecting 7 of his films, including many of the best ones. It’s discounted to 31 pounds plus 3 pounds for air shipping. That’s about $50.00 or so. The collection includes, The Go Between, The Servant, Accident, The Criminal, Eva, M. Klein, and Sleeping Tiger.
May 18th, 2009 at 2:52 am
Sleeping Tiger and The Accident show up once in a while on TCM (or have in the past), and I think both The Servant and Time Without Pity have shown up there too. I know The Big Night, Boy With Green Hair, Concrete Jungle, and These Are the Damned were all on TCM in the last year or so.
The Go-Between and Mr. Klein have both been on one or other of the cable movie channels in the past. M was available on DVD for this region fairly recently. It’s a good film with David Wayne in the Peter Lorre role and Howard Da Silva, Luther Adler, and Martin Gabel in the cast. The setting is moved from Germany to Los Angeles without signifigantly harming the story, though some of the social comment of the original is different.
Boom is a bit like watching a car wreck, and I suppose you could enjoy it on a sort of “I can’t believe how bad this is with these people involved” situation. Oddly, the only decent performance in the film is by Joanne Shimkus, but it’s hardly enough to hold the interest. Depending on your ability to enjoy the beautiful locations, and enjoy Burton, Taylor, and Coward in anything, and the fact that Tennesse Williams is almost always interesting, you might be able to get through the whole thing, but while I might have sat through it if I had paid for a ticket, with a remote in hand and other choices it may take more will power to sit through it than most people have. If there was some actual reward for doing it — a fine scene, or some startling turn — but it is all heavily pretentious, and if you don’t see where it is going five minutes in you either have never seen Tennesse Williams or heard of Greek tragedy.
Loesy’s taste for allegory could always get a bit preachy and out weigh the entertainment value of the film. The Boy With Green Hair is symptomatic of his work as is These Are the Damned. Both good films, but both a bit heavy handed on the allegory. Still, even his least films look good.
That said I still haven’t forgiven him for Modesty Blaise.
May 18th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
Modesty Blaise is an indifferent movie based on a newspaper comic strip — not a bad comic strip either, both long-running and established. I admit when I saw it first-run in New York City, I was disappointed both as a comic fan and Dirk Bogarde fan. Modesty Blaise the comic is not camp. Losey’s movie is camp, like the James Bonds are camp versions of Ian Fleming’s grim alcoholic killer James Bond. There are worse comic-strip movies, there are worse Bond imitations made in that era. Losey made some real stinkers, some indifferent productions. He made three movies with Pinter scripts: The Servant, Accident, The Go-Between. Losey’s career stands on those movies. Speaking as an actor who watches actors develop film technique over lengthy careers, I watched his work with Bogarde and Stanley Baker, casting them against their usual stereotypic roles.
Losey is theatre, he’s a Marxist, he is a working director of the Hollywood blacklist, and shares that distinction with Cy Enfield and Nicholas Ray — cult directors all, with the aura of political mystique, the gay subtext typical of British theater and film, the faint smell of opium in the drapes.
Andrew Sarris italicized a director’s significant works in The American Cinema. Modesty Blaise is a minor work by a significant auteur. Please forgive him. Blame the producers who handed him a script. After Go-Between the productions did not match the ideas.
I saw Hotel Reserve as a pre-teen in the 1950s. I watch it when it comes around. I agree my “theory” is based on mystical insight. Also in a 50 year quest to figure out why nobody named in the credits ever did anything as memorable. The key to Losey’s direction is how he works with actors. I don’t know what Losey did in WW2, but his escape into the British industry under the blacklist suggests a working knowledge of British theatre.
and consider his age at the time Hotel Reserve was shot in ’43 or’44.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAlosey.htm
Joseph Losey was born in La Crosse, Wisconsin on 14th January, 1909. After being educated at Dartmouth College (Medicine) and Harvard University (English Literature) he travelled to Germany to study with Bertolt Brecht. When he returned to the United States he directed plays in New York. This included the world premiere of Brecht’s Galileo.
After the war Losey to Hollywood where he directed The Boy With the Green Hair (1948), The Lawless (1950), The Big Night (1951) and The Prowler (1951).
May 18th, 2009 at 9:09 pm
Although Modesty Blaise began as a comic strip the film is based on the novel by creator Peter O’Donnell, and it and the subsequent books have recieved due critical and fan reception over the years. I don’t blame the producers, I blame Losey who had a half decent script and chose to camp it up because he was a pretentious twit. He did some fine movies, as Clark says, often with a homonsexual subtext, and he worked well with some fine actors, but even his best films are pretentious and arty. That may be a virtue when a film actually is art, but in material like Boom it is a pity and shows a disdain for the audience that borders on the bizarre.
The real problem with his Modesty Blaise and Boom isn’t that they are arty, pretentious, or camp, but that the director showed such contempt for the audience that he made no more effort than that to make a decent film. The problem with the whole camp sensibility is that all too often it is making fun of the audience and not the material. These two films show a contempt for the audience that is unforgivable, and that contempt is clearly Losey’s input. Even if he was forced to make Modesty Blaise, a professional would have done his best. Losey sabotages the film at every turn, and what’s worse supports what may well be the worst performance of Dirk Bogarde’s career. When your snobbery starts to sabotage the career’s of your friends I think you deserve the blame. Modesty Blaise is exactly the film that Losey wanted to make, and the result his fault. It’s not a lost masterpiece recut by the studio.
All directors make bad films. Try as they might no Hitchcock apologist has yet to convince me Topaz is a hidden masterpiece (or Under Capricorn either), and while Seven Women is interesting it is hardly John Ford’s best while by the time Hawks remade Rio Bravo for the third time as Rio Lobo there was nothing left to do with the story and it shows. Or is someone out there going to tell me Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is good Speilberg instead of a huge lumbering disappointment?
Directors aren’t gods and they make bad movies, sometimes because of flaws in their character and nature and not because the producer interfered. If Losey had made only one bad movie I would have to agree something caused Modesty Blaise to go wrong, but he made a number of bad films, almost all of which are projects where he seems to have let his camp taste get in the way of good film making.
No one is saying he was a bad director. At his best the made some fine films. But he made some stinkers too, and it’s just as well to admit to them and let him take his share of the blame.
When I say I don’t forgive him for Modesty Blaise it is only because he killed off a franchise at it’s birth because he was a silly pretentious ass and chose to make a bad movie. No one assigned him Modesty Blaise. Directors, certainly directors with Losey’s reputation, chose what they wanted to make by that time. The fact that other movies based on comic strips are bad is no excuse. A bad movie isn’t appreciably better because it was made by an auteur and not a hack. God knows a hack couldn’t have made Modesty Blaise any worse than Losey did.
I’m not attacking Losey or picking on him. I even like two of his most pretentious films, The Boy With Green Hair and These Are the Damned, but they were films where pretension fit. All directors, actors, screenwriters, make bad films. It’s inevitable. Usually it’s their own fault too. I freely admit there are some bad films I like, but I don’t kid myself there is some hidden artistic merit to them. There isn’t. I can explain why I like them, but I can’t make anyone else see them as a good film, and I don’t feel the need to excuse the creative talents involved.
As for Hotel Reserve, its a minor entertaining little film of no import. I see nothing in it that suggests the hand of an auteur, and while Losey may well have done the film under Hanbury’s name I don’t see anything in the film that couldn’t have been done by a minimally talented hack. Especially since there is no way to know who directed what.
And Losey is a fairly important director. I think if he had done Hotel Reserve the fact would have shown up somewhere before now. Especially the way film historians have hunted down even the most obscure contributions of other black listed creators. The film will certainly deserve another look if it turns out Losey did direct some scenes, but even then not much. It’s an okay film of one of Ambler’s least important books. The only reason the book is important is because the hero is the first of Ambler’s lost stateless protagonists, and because he used the structure of an Agatha Christie mystery for his spy story. Other than that the book has mostly historical merits, and the film is a pleasant time waster.
Losey’s reputation will survive Modesty Blaise, though Modesty Blaise film career certinly didn’t survive Joseph Losey. But don’t blame the material. It was the bricklayer who ruined the project, not the bricks.
May 19th, 2009 at 12:42 am
TCM ALERT
The Lawless will be shown tonight on Turner, 8 pm on the East Coast.
And I see that the screenplay is by Daniel Mainwaring, better known as Geoffrey Homes. That makes two good reasons to make sure I program my recorder right.
— Steve
May 19th, 2009 at 2:07 am
The Lawless isn’t a bad film, but in all honesty it is more notable for it’s subject matter than execution. Macdonald Carey, who stars, also did These Are the Damned later with Losey in England with a young Oliver Reed. A Daniel Mainwaring script is always a plus, but really, The Lawless is more sincere than entertaining.
It makes its points about the plight of migrant workers, but it would have helped if it made them in a better movie.
Do yourself a favor and watch Anthony Mann’s Border Incident or Mark Robson’s Trial instead, both more intelligent, more entertaining, and just as sincere. The Lawless is minor Losey, borderline noir, and more important for its politics and social statement than as a movie. You won’t hate it, or feel you wasted your time with it, but you may well be disappointed with that cast and those credits they couldn’t make a better film. It’s one of those films where everyone is so busy patting themselves on the back for dealing with a delicate and serious political and social situation they forgot to make a movie to go along with the self congratulation and the subject.
I was very disappointed with it. You may like it better, but overall the subject would have been better served by a documentary short subject than this tedious and obvious movie.
May 19th, 2009 at 4:58 am
I haven’t had a chance to see THE LAWLESS in decades. Hope it is as good as my memory tells me – and not the turkey people here are saying!
I don’t share Roger Ebert’s opinion, that there is something called a “bad but fascinating movies”. IMHO, if a film is “fascinating”, it’s a good movie!
And BOOM! is certainly fascinating. It has spectacular visual style throughout. Shot after shot is creatively composed, with elaborate visual designs and patterns.
BOOM! is not conventional entertainment. It has almost no story – and that’s hardly a virtue. It’s a two hour film version of an experimental play, with characters who talks poetic dialogue, and little else. I’ve always loved theater, and enjoy seeing filmed plays. If you watch it, you just have to accept that you are seeing an avant-garde play…
Losey’s version of A DOLL’S HOUSE also impressed, during the one time I saw it in the early 1970’s.
May 19th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
I will grant that Boom is gorgeous to look at. Even Modesty Blaise looks good. No one is saying Losey didn’t know how to film a movie. But Boom is full of itself and so are the cast, and playright. I enjoy good theatrical films and the avant-garde, but in this case everyone is so busy being clever they forgot to be good. With that cast and background I really wanted to like this film, and was greatly disappointed by the result. When Noel Coward can’t even manage to be droll there is something wrong.
The Lawless is a closer call. There is enough there that I can see how someone could enjoy it, but I found it trite and simply not that great. I can think of a good half dozen better movies that deal with the same subject or a similar one and at least manage to be more than a vague political tract tied to an uninteresting story.
That said, even Modesty Blaise isn’t a bomb. At worst all three films would probably rate two stars out of a four star system, but considering the talent involved in all three films two stars is a pretty poor showing. Lawless, though, is a studio film, and Losey deserves some credit for even getting it on the screen, just as I think he deserves much of the blame for Boom and Modesty Blaise. Lawless is a failed, but noble effort. The other two are just failures.
May 19th, 2009 at 8:49 pm
I’ve never been able to make it through MODESTY BLAISE. Some individual scenes show Losey’s visual flair: the magician on the street, and later, when the bad guys attack the apartment. But Dirk Bogarde’s villain is very hard to take. Hardly anybody actually likes MODESTY BLAISE.
Behind all this, is the fact that no two film critics or historians can agree on which Losey films are good and which are bad. Everyone has favorites – and they’re all different! He is a director who always stirs up wildly different opinions. Most people agree he is talented – but there consensus ends!
May 19th, 2009 at 9:27 pm
Mike hits it on the head. There is obvious talent in Losey’s case, but there is also either a lack of focus, or an uneveness that mars much of his work. I would assume most critics consider at least The Servant to be a masterpiece, and maybe also Time Without Pity, Accident, and The Go Between, but most of the others aren’t as clear cut. Some. like These Are the Damned, are more interesting than actually good.
I think the entire Modesty Blaise film can be summed up by the scene at the end when Dirk Bogarde is staked out in the sun by one of Modesty’s Arab allies, and through cracked and blistered lips whispers, “Champagne, champagne …” That’s about the level of humor of the whole hopeless mess, though some of the visuals are nice.
May 22nd, 2009 at 4:36 pm
The only Losey film I really liked is The Prowler which benefits from stellar performances from Van Heflin (a strong contender for most underrated actor ever) and Evelyn Keyes. This is a film noir in the strictest sense, and quite modern in its treatment of sexuality and murder.
Others I’ve seen ranged from good (Time Without Pity) to awful (Boom) through downright weird (Secret Ceremony) but were marred in my view by Losey’s remoteness. All his films have an abstract, emotionless quality that reminds one from Kubrick – another director I’ve always had difficulties with.
May 22nd, 2009 at 8:29 pm
Xavier, You’ve put your finger on what I’ve put together about Losey’s films. This is based fon what everybody who’s commented on them has said, even though everybody has seen them from their own perspectives. But the word I think I’ve been looking for may be “remoteness.” That’s from my point of view, mind you — someone who’s not seen them yet.
— Steve
May 23rd, 2009 at 5:38 am
Xavier has Losey in his sights. There is both a remoteness, and an almost clinical feeling to many of his films as if he draws back at the last moment from committing to the project. That reticence can leave the viewer a bit cold.
I don’t know if Van Heflin is underated, he did win an Oscar for Johnny Eager, but he was certainly one of the few leading men in Hollywood who was also a fine character actor.
To see him in a slightly different light check out Grand Central Murder where he plays a married private eye named Barney Custer who solves the murder of an actress with help from his wife Virginia Grey and hinderance from cop Sam Levene. Tom Conway, Horace (Stephen) McNally, and Samuel S. Hinds round out a good cast.
The film is based on a novel by Sue McVeigh and has a smart script by Peter Ruric, who as Paul Cain wrote the Black Mask classic Fast One. It’s a bit above a B film, if not a full fledged A, but S. Sylvan Simon’s direction is good, and the film has something of the qualities of the Thin Man films from the same studio (MGM). Nothing major, but a nice little mystery that plays better than some more ‘important’ films, and shows Heflin in a lighter mode.
There are times I would rather see one of these slick well done mystery films than a dozen more serious and important films. There is something to be said for simple professionalism and competence.
May 26th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Mea culpa. According to the David Caute biography, I would rule Losey out of anything to do with Hotel Reserve — he was too busy getting divorced. Wish I’d read this book before I opened my mouth. However, I was spurred to action about an idea.
But I don’t know why the movie caught my eye.
May 26th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
Clark
Well, we certainly gained a good long discussion about Losey and his films out of the conjecture, and that’s a big plus, as far as I’m concerned.
— Steve
May 29th, 2009 at 9:57 pm
[…] Hotel Reserve (RKO, 1944; from Epitaph for a Spy), already reviewed and discussed in detail here, looked better (thanks to camera operator Arthur Ibbetson) than it perhaps […]
October 17th, 2010 at 5:45 pm
I am puzzled, having just watched the VHS of Hotel Reserve. I feel sure that when I saw the film when it first was released there was a scene in the hotel where Mason sets a trap for the spy by leaving his camera on a table in the dining or sitting room, and keeps watch Someone either obscures his view or talks to him, and when he looks at the table again the camera has gone. Did I imagine this, or was it cut from the VHS and if so, why?
October 18th, 2010 at 11:45 am
My copy is the standard VHS that came out, and I don’t recall that scene. It likely got cut somewhere along the way for time and may be lost, and sometimes the American and British versions can be substantially different (compare the running times listed in Leslie Halliwell’s book to those listed in Maltin).
Of course I’ve also been known to improve a movie in my memory and be disappointed when I saw it again and the scene I remembered isn’t the way I remembered it. There is a vivid scene I recall from a western, and I’ll be damned if I have ever found it, though several films do variations on it — including STAGECOACH. I’m beginning to think I dreamed it up when I was home from school with the flu and under the influence of cough syrup and fever. The closest I’ve been able to find to it was a scene in a George O’Brien western, but it is staged completely different from my memory. I’ve been trying to find this one for forty years now, so by now I’m pretty sure I made it up.
October 27th, 2010 at 12:41 pm
Dear Steve (meaning the author of this blog); I agree with you completely that the ending is silly, in the sense you mentioned:Peter Vadassy alone against the villain, with so many police men around. Then again I guess this has served as a model for many films, not only in the detective genre: “Commando” with Schwarzenegger against his former companion. John Rambo against the police of a whole city; Bruce Willis in “Die Hard”; Eddie Murphy in “Beverly Hills Cop” (if I remember correctly, possibly the closest to this example, in that Murphy didn’t arrive alone to fetch the evil people), and so on and so forth: surely you can add more examples to this. My point is, ever since the fairy tales, it seems people must identify with a concrete hero, even an unlikely one (example “Frodo” as opposed to the prince of the Sleeping Beauty). I want all this to be a mark of appreciation for your commentaries about the film. I just saw it a few days ago (October 20th, 2010), just after I read this blog. I am writing this precisely after having seen the film, so I could fully appreciate what was the “silliness” of the ending you are talking about, and which for me it became a sort of “standard ending” (or part of it).
Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
Yours
TaO
October 27th, 2010 at 3:06 pm
TaO
Thank you for agreeing with me! It’s been a while since I read through all of the comments on this post, which went off in another direction for a while after Joseph Losey’s possible involvement with it was brought up.
I regret to add that I have not watched this movie again, so at the moment I cannot say that I have changed my mind about it. But sometimes one’s mood when seeing a film, or even just one aspect of it, affects your whole disposition toward it.
In this case, though, as I recall it was the entire film that I thought was weak, and the ending, as you say, was only the final straw.
It’s been long enough though, since I wrote this review, that another sit-through seems to be in order.
— Steve
March 14th, 2012 at 2:58 pm
My wife & I enjoyed “Hotel Reserve”. We wonder, however, where it was filmed. The buildings appear to be other than British but 1944 was not a time to be taking film crews out of the country. Can anybody provide an answer?
August 3rd, 2013 at 4:11 pm
It was all filmed in one or other of two studios – details are on the IMDB website.
November 14th, 2013 at 10:39 pm
Clare Hamilton was Maureen O’Hara’s baby sister- she talks about her in her autobiography Tis Herself.
January 9th, 2015 at 2:41 pm
Agree that Van Heflin should have received more public adulation than he got. He is always solid, reliable, fine in almost any role. Boy, do I miss actors like that.
Evelyn Keyes appears as a guest on ‘You Bet Your Life’ with (my favorite) Groucho Marx.
I’ve seen most of ‘Hotel Reserver’ and found it mostly innocuous. No complaints, no raves. I wouldn’t label it noir at all (I incline towards conservativeness with that label) but I also did not find it a screwball comedy. It was just a light, mildly-tense spy adventure. I liked the setting and the concept and of course, any James Mason performance is intriguing.
I’ve seen ‘Modesty Blaise’ and found it thoroughly annoying. I’m anti-camp’ as a rule, I think its a cheap schtick and unworthy of anyone really worth their salt.
Much dislike for Nicholas Ray.
I’ve seen ‘Secret Ceremony’ and rather wanted to forget it. I’m not a fan of Liz Taylor in all except 2-3 movies.
What a grand discussion, above in this thread. Kudos to all involved. A real display of connoisseurship.
–Feliks