Geheimagent S. schlägt zu

Nifty movie with inventive seq. throughout and turnabouts. Rec. from Eurospy Guide by Matt Blake/David Deal in the Funny list. This movie is a pre-Goldfinger spy movie with the same outlandishness.

The first of two movies ,based on the Monsieur Stanislas ,an advertising executive overtaken by events ,who wants to lead a peaceful life but is involved ,like the hero of "north by northwest",in a spy story :like him,he lives with mother (and grandmother).

It was the time Jean Marais was relinquishing the sword of the swashbucklers for the broader horizons of the spy thriller;Hitchcock's influence ("stagefright" "the man who knew too much") shows now and there but the characters are often funny : hats off to veteran Noel Roquevert and his syringe;Genevieve Page,who was fluent in English and worked with Wilder ,Cukor and Daves ,is an elegant leading lady who in her native country never got the parts she deserved.

What we have here is a delightful French romantic comedy with espionage overtones that even the most spy-hardened viewer will find diverting. Jean Marais is a married businessman with the unlikely moniker of Stanislas Everest Dubois who stumbles into true love and the danger of espionage in the same night.

Marais inadvertently picks up the wrong coat while on his first date with Genevieve Page and thus begins the sequence of events that leads him into a world of humorous cops, dimwitted spies, curmudgeon cab drivers, and other sundry characters that cause him much frustration.

Marais is a winning hero who deftly carries the film and Page is cute and clever as the love interest. Gaia Germani has a small role as a double agent who meets her end in Marais' apartment.

There are more throwaway lines and gags here that work than can be found in many out and out comedies. The score by Georges Delerue is unobtrusive but also unmemorable. The finale of this film charges wholeheartedly into improbability but all is forgiven by the viewer won over so completely from the start.

I have absolutely nothing against Black & White movies, but if there is one genre that I feel is served MUCH better by being shot in color, it's the Euro-Spy genre. A B & W mid-1960s French spy movie (which this one is) looks as awkward to me as a color mid-1940s American film noir would. The plot is decent if unoriginal (wrong coat -> mistaken identity), the hero is OK, the female lead is personable enough, there is one nice bit of stunt car driving, and even some (intentionally) funny moments, but overall "The Reluctant Spy" is just too drab and boring for me to recommend without reluctance (pun intended). Maybe if the striking Gaia Germani had a larger role....*1/2 out of 4.

This is a very funny, intelligently made movie. Reading the notes I took about it 40 years ago, made me feel again the happiness with which I left the theater then.

Definitely much more worth while to have on videotape than 745 342 other titles, and yet the movie producers don't think so. Oh, well, what I can I do?