1963's French-Italian "The Reluctant Spy" (L'Honorable Stanislas, Agent Secret in France, Spionaggio Senza Frontiere in Italy) is an early, black and white example of the blossoming Eurospy genre, an Embassy Pictures release through Joseph E. Levine. Director Jean-Charles Dudrumet had the good fortune of casting the renowned Jean Marais in the lead, an actor whose association with Jean Cocteau yielded such classics as the 1946 "Beauty and the Beast" before international fame beckoned during the following decade. Stanislas Everest Dubois is a typical businessman running an advertising agency in Paris, living at home with his mother and grandmother, an ordinary fellow caught up in extraordinary circumstances while trying to romance museum guide Ursula (Genevieve Page). A simple exchange of coats leads to a meeting with the other owner, who suddenly drops dead in his hotel bathroom in the act of brushing his teeth ("hotels are almost like hospitals, they would rather see their clients die outside than inside!"). The Hitchcockian MacGuffin is a microfilm found inside a chess piece, Stanislas often resorting to fisticuffs to escape being caught, a lighthearted though lackluster vehicle carried almost entirely by its rugged star (a more apt alternate title is "How to Be a Spy Without Even Trying"). Gaia Germani (Christopher Lee's "The Castle of the Living Dead") has a small silent role as a murdered double agent, Genevieve Page best remembered by genre buffs as the femme fatale of Billy Wilder's "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes," opposite Christopher Lee's Mycroft Holmes. Jean Marias would repeat the role of Stanislas in 1965's "Killer Spy" (from the same director), as well as playing Simon Templar in "The Saint Lies in Wait," and the "Fantomas" trilogy (followed by "Fantomas Unleashed" and "Fantomas vs. Scotland Yard"), all carrying the same wry tone.
