Critical Reactions #11 (The Hotel New Hampshire)

Opening in the spring of 1984, THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE received mostly negative reactions critics and the public. It did find some support, and has since gone onto a have small cult following, but for the most part THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE has never been a critical or popular favorite.

Some of the critics, especially the older male ones, really had their knives out for the film, director Tony Richardson, and the young cast. Frankly the little respect I had left for critics like Vincent Canby and Rex Reed has vanished completely after reading their incredible rude and sexist comments concerning Jodie Foster's appearance. Canby wrote, "she had better watch those malteds between classes at Yale" while Rex Reed added, "Foster is pasty, pudgy and too asexual to attract gnats". Way to review the film at hand you self absorbed twits. Hadn't Jodie Foster been through enough in the early eighties without having these leering assholes passing as film critics writing stuff like this in major publications? It really makes me sick.
Here is a selection of quotes, positive and negative, actually related to the film on the screen.

"The movie looks great...Richardson demonstrates a good deal of skill in the way he successfully squeezes most of the Berry family adventures into a film of normal length...too many colorful characters tend to cancel one another out...the movie means to be trendy bit it is out of touch...Kinski is absolutely humorous as Susie The Bear...THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE is exhausting."
-Vincent Canby, New York Times-

"This macabre, whimsical, erotic, dark, seriocomic film is a complex tale about an eccentric family and the psychological and emotional maelstroms that follow them around from New England to New York to Vienna, where the Hotel New Hampshire is located. Writer-director Tony Richardson worked from the convoluted novel by John Irving that covers most universally saleable topics — homosexuality, death, incest, abandonment, Nazis, masochism, terrorists, rape, mental instability, and anarchists....Associated with the family is Suzie the Bear (Nastassja Kinski) who is not secure enough to come out of her bear suit. One friend of the family, Freud (Wallace Shawn), has been blinded by the Nazis and is running the Hotel New Hampshire in Vienna when he asks everyone to come and help him out. By this time, the plot has run out of room, and the climactic endings to several unresolved relationships happen in quick succession."
-All Movie Guide-

"Veers between brilliance and banality with an almost manic enthusiasm."
-Andrew Howe, EFilmCritic-

"THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE wants to be both charming; a fairy tale with wings of steel. It's engines roar but it doesn't fly."
-Jack Kroll, Newsweek-

"Notable mainly for its magnificent cast, The Hotel New Hampshire has garnered a healthy share of nasty reviews. This is perhaps because many of the issues dealt with in the movie were considered taboo back in the early eighties, but it’s rare that a movie actually gets better as it ages. While it’s not likely to break your back with laughter and it’s far from a great movie, fans of John Irving (or the myriad actors involved) could do a lot worse than giving this one a look."
-Scott Weinberg, Apollo Film-

"Richardson was obviously a brave man to adapt and direct this screen version of John Irving's ultra-whimsical 1981 novel, with serial hotelier Bridges eventually leading his family to Vienna in his quest for the perfect establishment...If it worked on the page, however, it's glassy and bewildering on screen, somehow contriving torpor from a catalogue of sensationalism and eccentricity. Irving ties the novel together with oft-repeated pat homilies on the human condition ('Keep passing the open windows'), but writer/director Richardson's aim for stylistic continuity through relentlessly jolly Offenbach arrangements on the soundtrack is an ultimately self-defeating gesture further distancing the viewer from the on-screen shenanigans."
-Time Out Film Guide-

"The film and cast rarely touch the earth, which makes it hard for them to touch a moviegoers heart."
-Richard Corliss, Time-

"The ensemble acting in this film is commendable, given the dramatic fireworks exploding in all directions...Everything in this domestic comedy about the Berry family is exaggerated — from its idiosyncratic characters to its zany incidents to its far-flung settings. Only the most adventuresome film goer will be able to look beyond the vulgar language and the strange antics on the screen to see the insightful messages about familial politics contained in the story."
-Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Practice-

"sometimes irritating mixture of farce and insight into the human condition worked better on paper. As Bridges and his family pull together to establish the hotel they have always dreamed of, everything thinkable - and unthinkable - happens to them. A series of sexual adventures (or misadventures) sees Foster gang-raped, but she also gets to have sex with Kinski dressed in bear suit, in what must be her most bizarre role to date. A failed literary adaptation...still curiosity worth checking into."
-Channel 4 Film-

"A clumsy cartoon...Foster's smirking work is rivaled in unpleasantness only by Nastassja Kinski as a woman hiding in a bear costume."
-Howard Kissel, Women's Wear Daily-

"Too deliberately quirky, but always watchable."
-Ken Hanke, Mountain Express-

"As might be expected, Hotel really doesn't work onscreen, despite the best efforts of writer/director Tony Richardson, some of which pay off and some of which seriously miss the mark. The film's biggest failing is probably its inability to find a consistent tone (or to make its many tones mesh together harmoniously), although its disjointed narrative runs a close second. With so much going on in the film, there's not enough time to really explore the characters themselves, although the cast generally manages to fill in the blanks admirably."
-Craig Butler, MSN-

"The witless, amoral adaptation of John Irving's novel about a very strange family's adventures in New Hampshire, Vienna and New York City, which include gang rape, incest, and Kinski in a bear suit."
-MovieHound-

"Tony Richardson's adaptation of The Hotel New Hampshire proves that the unique qualities of John Irving's fiction are accessible in print and elusive on screen. (Not surprisingly, Irving's books were not truly successful as films until Irving himself adapted The Cider House Rules, although some viewers will prefer The World According to Garp.) Here, Richardson distills the essence of Irving but misses the author's dominant themes; the result is a film that follows Irving closely and understands its characters without ever giving them complete and coherent personalities. Without that essential ingredient, this film--about..."
-Matchflicks"

"The Hotel New Hampshire” is a dreadfully long movie about a family as dysfunctional as any family can get. Adapted from John Irving’s novel, the film boasts the brains to be an intelligent drama with a touch of comedy, but the plot falls off the deep-end into tasteless, unjustifiable obscurity."
-Scott Spicciati, Aggressive Voice-

" The film develops a bitter, cynical sense of irony throughout. However, the final stages seem rushed, packed with incident but losing the tonal assurance of much of the first half and glossing over narrative developments in a kind of uncontrollably elliptical structure. Thus, the film gives the impression that finally it has slipped out of Richardson’s grasp and he is left with incidents in search of coherence. This protracted, episodic descent ultimately sinks the film. Nevertheless, as a piece of bitter whimsy, a vision of life’s perhaps inevitable disappointment and the burden of dreams, The Hotel New Hampshire is a genuine oddment to be treasured for its better moments. Befittingly, much of the film concerns intangible emotions and the imperative to somehow express them in relation to place and in the process make them tangible...Although the main characters are eccentric, the film is remarkable for the way it makes them seem almost normal, and the world around them the true abnormality – no wonder that in their world the forbidden and the dream is all that is left bar despair. In so charting their fleeting triumph, the film endorses them."
-WiderScreenings-

"The film's tone is sour...Kinski pulls the assignment...sweaty and tousled, she is actually quite good..."
-Sheila Benson, LA Times-

"The whole film is told in the style of a credit sequence...one of the most faithful movie adaptations ever-faithful in both letter and spirit..."
-Richard Combs, Monthly Film Bulletin-

"...very funny...Foster is marvelous...generally well cast and performed...(but) great art this is far from."
-John Coleman, New Statesman-

"...disastrous...stupid, weightless and empty of meaning...what did Richardson become obsessed with? In this idiot's burlesque, the actors are not so much used as used up...Richardson packs too many sardines into the tin, the movie looks squeezed, shapeless, jumbled."
-David Denby, New York-

"Total disaster...a revolting exercise in cinematic diarrhea...sick, nauseating, humorless and ultimately pointless...Kinski has proven countless times before she can't act...nothing about THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE works on any level."
-Rex Reed, New York Post- (He didn't like the film)

"By virtue of its faithfulness to the source, Richardson's movie is two movies...Kinski is miscast...What's wrong with the Kinski character is what's wrong with the movie. In a movie what you see is what you get. It's literal. Saying she's ugly doesn't make her ugly."
-Joseph Gelmis, Newsday-

"A funny thing happened on my way to reviewing THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE, I encountered some people who actually liked it! Why would, how could, anyone enjoy this botched mess, this shambles of a movie? Kinski, for once pleasantly at home in a wildly disorganized circus in which she does not have to labor in vain to make sense as a character...I would have had serious problems with THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE even if it had been a better movie...the wrong reasons for liking it (are) cultural snobbery, generational complacency, moral flabbiness, and the nihilism of convenience."
-Andrew Sarris, Village Voice-

As you can see, critical reaction was very much divided on THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE, with it mostly veering towards the negative. I will be posting my own reactions to this very interesting film soon, as well as taking my usual look at other things connected with it.

David Watkin: Shooting Kinski Again

THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE marked the first time Nastassja had worked with a cinematographer for a second time. My look at Academy Award winning director of photography David Watkin can be found here. This older article of mine has biographical information on Watkin, and notes on both films he shot with Nastassja, including THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE.

Two Literary Looks At Richardson's The Hotel New Hampshire

I tracked down two interesting looks at the film courtesy of a 1985 article in "Literature In Film Quarterly" by Edward T. Jones, and the John C. Tibbetts and James M. Welsh edited "Novels Into Films".
Here are some of the interesting insights on Richardson's work that the two offered.

"The distinguishing motif in both the novel and the film is magical transformation, of life becoming art, presented with comic-elegiac tenderness, even innocence, in the midst of brutal action and language...Richardson retains Irving's structural design of the novel...more remarkably (he) keeps the novel's central metaphors in the much more literal texture of the film...Richardson retains at least some of Irving's literary allusion...Richardson has captured, albeit not perfectly, the contradictions and circularity of THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE by means which are his own and film's...(he) finds the symbols from the novel to represent both the art and life. Critics of the film seem to think that he should have transcended Irving's conditions and limitations. That Tony Richardson's invention does not presume beyond his literary source is curiously touching, and effect."
-Jones-

"Richardson's attempted to be both free and faithful to the story, in part he succeeded, to a degree not achieved, in many viewer's judgement, in George Roy Hill's more popular adaptation of Irving's THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP. Richardson's large cast is extremely well chosen...Lowe's John was more often, and perhaps unfairly, criticized...since he has to play a realist in a family of dreamers and would-be artists...Critics were not kind to Richardson's film, but the director rendered fairly well the axiom of the novel's King of Mice: Life is serious but art is fun."
-Tibbetts + Welsh-

It was very nice to read some positive thoughts towards Richardson's flawed but interesting film. It made me feel not completely alone in my admiration for it.

John Irving On The Film Version Of The Hotel New Hampshire

Here is a link to a fascinating essay by author John Irving on Tony Richardson's adaptation of his novel THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE. It's a fascinating read, and it is great to hear Irving's own honest reactions to the film. For the most part his thoughts are positive with some reservations. I don't agree with his comments on Nastassja's performance, but admire his candor, and he doesn't display any of the spite so many of the film critics of the day did.

Soundtrack #7: The Hotel New Hampshire (Jacques Offenbach)

I have unfortunately never been able to track down the soundtrack of THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE so I can't really comment on it. I can say though that the music Tony Richardson chose for the film, by French composer Jacques Offenbach, is extraordinary so I can imagine the album is a very rewarding listen.
Apparently the lp is fairly rare here in the States. There are a few listings for it on Ebay, but that is all. Even the usually reliable soundtrack collector site has very little information on it. This small low quality shot of its cover is the only one I could find online as well.

I hope to get a copy of the album someday and post more thoughts on it. The music is lovely though, and Richardson uses it very well in his film.

Here are a couple of links connected to Offenbach and the soundtrack that might be of interest.

Wikipedia has a fairly detailed look at him, as well as some outside links.

And here is one of the Ebay listings that has some information on the soundtrack.

14. The Hotel New Hampshire

Even though he was nearing sixty years old when he shot his adaptation of John Irving's THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE, Tony Richardson's film feels very much like the work of a young man with all of the energy in the world at his disposal. That Richardson had intended to make two films, instead of just the one, from Irving's material shows even clearer that this was a director truly firing on all cylinders in 1984.
The British born Oscar winning Richardson is unquestionably one of the most important filmmakers who came out of the fifties. His finest work, including the likes of LOOK BACK IN ANGER (1958), THE LONELINESS OF A LONG DISTANCE RUNNER (1962), TOM JONES (1963), THE LOVED ONE (1963), and a brave production of HAMLET (1969) show Richardson as a man of great intelligence and seemingly unending talent.
Starting with NED KELLY in 1970, Richardson's productions seemed to lose their favor with the critical community that had embraced him in the sixties. This says more about the critics than Richardson though as films like A DELICATE BALANCE (1973), JOSEPH ANDREWS (1977) and THE BORDER (1982) are all really fascinating and valuable works. Richardson is often not given enough credit for the performances he is able to bring out of his actors, and yet that is something that is apparent in all of his films. Watch, for example, the subtle and restrained work that Richardson draws out of a post THE SHINING Jack Nicholson in THE BORDER to see this.

After the muted reception granted to THE BORDER, Richardson began planning his double film adaption of one of Irving's most complex works. THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE, with its complex story lines, large cast of characters and near epic sweep, was thought to be un-adaptable but Irving himself praised Richardson's original scripts as brilliant. Unfortunately the studio finally balked at the two picture concept and forced Richardson to make just one film. Refusing to lose too much of Irving's witty original, Richardson created a final 110 minute film that is simultaneously brilliant, flawed, frustrating and inspiring. Had he been allowed to do what he originally planned, I believe the two part THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE would have been one of Tony Richardson's great works. As it is, it is one of his most imperfect but still overwhelmingly passionate films.
THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE, a work centered on the most dysfunctional Berry family, features one of the greatest ensemble casts of the eighties. The core of the film belongs to a really wonderful Jodie Foster as the brilliant but troubled Frannie Berry, a handsome (and I think quite good) Rob Lowe as her brother John, and Beau Bridges as their ambitious dreamer of a father, Win. Also a part of the family are Paul McCrane, Lisa Banes, Jennifer Dundas and a young Seth Green. Throughout the film we meet a large variety of supporting players including most notably Wallace Shawn as a Mr. Freud and as the paralyzingly insecure Susie The Bear, played by Nastassja Kinski.

Working with talented cinematographer David Watkin, Tony Richardson made the huge feeling THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE on a relatively small budget in Canada in the fall of 1983. Things seemed troubled from the start as Richardson not only had to deal with merging two films into one, but he also was forced into shooting in some locations he didn't want, and he lost the corporation of the band he wanted to score part of the film, namely Queen (Whose KEEP PASSING THE OPEN WINDOWS was to play a key role in the film).
Everything seemed to work against Richardson, his crew and cast but they all persevered on. Many bonds were formed, including a close friendship between Jodie Foster and Nastassja Kinski, and some were broken but Richardson delivered his film on time, and it was set to go in the early part of 1984.
THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE is a slightly off putting film at first, as such it demands reviewings to truly fall under its spell. Certainly some of the subject matter, from rape to incest, is tricky to handle at best, but Richardson's film by design becomes more and more defined the more you watch it. With this in mind, it is easy to see why so many critics savaged it back in 1984 when it hit theaters.
The film is an absolute beauty to look at. Watkin's lovely photography is consistent throughout, and I can't imagine too many people having problems with that aspect of it. Richardson's direction has been called erratic here, but I think it is more a case of him embracing once again all of the power and invention that so defined much of the sixties when he was at the top of his game. Like a free jazz musician playing with time signatures and bending notes into something near alien, Richardson's direction of THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE is fresh, inventive, purposely sloppy at times, and never dull. It is the penultimate near great theatrical work by a very talented filmmaker, and it didn't deserve the savaging it got back in
1984.
The cast is quite extraordinary. Jodie Foster was at a weird transition point in her career but you can already see her developing into America's best actress. She is saucy, sad, funny, and very human in the part of Frannie. I like Rob Lowe a lot here too. He is forced to play kind of the calm at the center of a very electric storm, and his work is very centered, and very solid. The likes of Beau Bridges, Wallace Shawn, Matthew Modine, and Anita Morris seem incapable of giving weak performances and that is no different here, as they are all splendid..
The casting of Kinski in the role of Susie The Bear was much talked about, and it remains the most controversial of the film. In the book, the character was short, homely, and dirty. It was easy to see why she would be so insecure as to wear a bear suit to disguise her ugliness...but Nastassja Kinski? Why would Tony Richardson cast one of the most beautiful women in cinematic history in this part? That is a question that was asked a lot back in 1984, so I would like to offer up my own humble little answer.
What could be more devastatingly sad and tragic, than an unquestionable beautiful person so wrapped up with inner turmoil, self doubt and insecurities that she literally hides herself from the world behind a mask? Richardson had the idea, and I agree with him, that someone who was completely wrong about themselves would be much more effective than someone who was right. Susie The Bear in Richardson's film doesn't hide herself because she is ugly, she hides herself because she thinks she is ugly. There is a big, and profound, difference there.

I was recently accused of saying every film that Nastassja Kinski made was great, and this is simply not the case if you go back and read my reviews. However I do find her to be almost always exceptional, and her work as Susie The Bear is some of her best to my eyes. She is asked to do the impossible here, namely to make you believe that she thinks she is so hideous that she should hide inside a bear costume. Kinski delivers on this completely, and gives the most fragile but cutting work of her career. THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE opened up in the spring of 84 and disappeared soon after. John Irving noted it did better in Europe, but it has never found larger than a small cult following here in the States. The film is currently available on a sharp looking Widescreen DVD, with only the trailer as an extra. It is a rewarding, if at times gloriously frustrating, experience that gets better and better with each viewing. The great Tony Richardson would complete just one more theatrical picture in his life, the Jessica Lange film BLUE SKY, before passing away in the early nineties. While THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE isn't one of his greatest films, it is one of his most heartfelt and inventive. It occupies its own very special place in Richardson's important filmography...needless to say, it deserves another look

Odds And Ends: The Hotel New Hampshire

"...it touched something deep...What is reality and what Susie sees about herself are two different things. Something melts inside Susie so she can take off the bear suit. This happened to me. There is a beauty about myself that I never saw, or I rejected, until recently."
-Nastassja Kinski in The Washington Post-

Outside of the above quote I have not been able to find Nastassja speaking on THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE. Essential though are the two interviews she did with her Co-Star Jodie Foster for Interview magazine around the time of the film's release. I would scan them here but unfortunately my copies are of poor quality and are not scanable.
The usual amount of press material can be found on the film, but I have been unable to find to many varying poster designs. It seems that the group shot, and the shot of the bear were the main ones used to market the film. I will post more in the future if I am able to track any down.
I think THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE is flawed but undervauled film, that deserves a second look. Like many films Nastassja made in this period, I don't think it warrented the critical pounding it took.
Nastassja would follow up THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE with PARIS, TEXAS and MARIA'S LOVERS, two of her greatest, and most well received films. My look at my favorite Nastassja Kinski film will begin shortly.

David Watkin R.I.P.

I just found out that David Watkin, the talented cinematographer who shot TO THE DEVIL A DAUGHTER and THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE has passed away. This is very sad news and my best to his family and friends. For those interested, my tribute to Walker that I posted last year can be found here. He was an amazing asset to modern cinema and will be missed.

Screenshot of the Day: The Hotel New Hampshire (1984)

Nastassja on eBay: Some Rare Promotional Designs

A rare film card from the mid eighties featuring several different images of Nastassja:


A terrific PAL VHS of One From The Heart sold on the strength of one of Nastassja's most iconic photos:


A large foreign Magdalene design quite different from the typical one sheets:


A large Italian version of the On A Moonlit Night one sheet (an upgrade to the VHS version I offered here before with the same image):


A Yugoslavian version of the Maria's Lovers poster:


A rare image advertising Maria's Lovers:


A lobby card I haven't posted before for The Hotel New Hampshire:


Finally, a rare look at the cover of a promotional booklet for the very limited US release of The Moon In The Gutter:

The Hotel New Hampshire Revisited

Even though he was nearing sixty years old when he shot his adaptation of John Irving's The Hotel New Hampshire in the fall of 1983, Tony Richardson was still artistically at the top of his game with seemingly all of the energy in the world at his disposal. That Richardson had intended to make two films, instead of just the one, from Irving's material shows even clearer that this was a director truly firing on all cylinders in the last period of his remarkable career.
The British born Oscar winning Richardson is unquestionably one of the most important filmmakers who came out of the fifties. His finest works, including the likes of Look Back in Anger (1958), The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962), Tom Jones (1963), The Loved One (1963), and a brave production of Hamlet (1969) show Richardson as a man of great intelligence and seemingly unending talent.
Starting with Ned Kelly in 1970, Richardson's productions seemed to lose their favor with the critical community that had embraced him in the sixties. This says more about the critics than Richardson though as films like A Delicate Balance (1973), Joseph Andrews (1977) and The Border (1982) are all really fascinating and valuable works. Often cited for his visual style, Richardson is not given enough credit for the performances he is able to bring out of his actors, and yet that is something that is apparent in all of his films. Watch, for example, the subtle and restrained work that Richardson draws out of a post The Shining Jack Nicholson in The Border to see this.





After the muted reception granted to The Border, Richardson began planning his double film adaption of one of Irving's most complex works. The Hotel New Hampshire, with its complex story lines, large cast of characters and near epic feel, was thought to be un-adaptable but Irving himself praised Richardson's original scripts as brilliant. Irving spoke in an interview about his admiration for Richardson and his excitement about the film with, "I've never felt as flattered as when Tony Richardson told me he wanted to make a movie of The Hotel New Hampshire, my fifth novel. I loved Tony Richardson's films. He had a range like no one else-- violent or austere one minute, wildly comic the next. The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner and The Loved One, Tom Jones and The Border. I had no doubt what Tony Richardson would do with The Hotel New Hampshire--a macabre comedy and a fairy tale, not half as realistic as The World According to Garp. Tony didn't even pretend to be disappointed when I told him I didn't want to write the screenplay; he wanted to write it himself, which he did."




Unfortunately the studio finally balked at the two picture concept and forced Richardson to make just one film. Refusing to lose too much of Irving's witty original, Richardson created a final 110 minute work that is simultaneously brilliant, flawed, frustrating and inspiring. Had he been allowed to do what he originally planned, I believe the two part The Hotel New Hampshire would have been one of Tony Richardson's great works. As it is, it is one of his most imperfect but still overwhelmingly passionate films.



The Hotel New Hampshire, a work centered on the very dysfunctional Berry family, features one of the greatest ensemble casts of the eighties. The core of the film belongs to a really wonderful Jodie Foster as the brilliant but troubled Frannie Berry, a handsome (and I think quite good) Rob Lowe as her brother John, and Beau Bridges as their ambitious dreamer of a father, Win. Also as part of the family are Paul McCrane, Lisa Banes, Jennifer Dundas and a young Seth Green. Throughout the film we meet a large variety of supporting players including most notably Wallace Shawn as a Mr. Freud and Nastassja Kinski as the paralyzingly insecure Susie The Bear.



Working with talented cinematographer David Watkin, Tony Richardson made the epic feeling The Hotel New Hampshire on a relatively small budget in Canada in that chilly fall of 1983. Things seemed troubled from the start as Richardson not only had to deal with merging two films into one, but he was also forced into shooting in some locations he didn't intend to use. On top of those setbacks, he lost the corporation of the band he wanted to score part of the film, namely Queen (Whose "Keep Passing the Open Windows" was to play a key role in the film).



Everything seemed to work against Richardson, his crew and cast but they all persevered on. Many bonds were formed, including a close friendship between Jodie Foster and Nastassja Kinski, and some were broken but Richardson delivered his film on time, and it was set to go in the early part of 1984.



The Hotel New Hampshire is a slightly off putting film at first, as such it demands reviewing to truly fall under its spell. Certainly some of the subject matter, from rape to incest, is tricky to handle at best, but Richardson's film by design becomes more and more defined the more you watch it. With this in mind, it is easy to see why so many critics savaged it back in 1984 when it hit theaters.





The film is an absolute beauty to look at. Watkin's lovely photography is consistent throughout, and I can't imagine too many people having problems with that aspect of it. The much missed Kent born cinematographer David Watkin is among the most important directors of photography in British Cinema history. He has lensed an astonishing number of wildly diverse and legendary films such as Help, The Knack...and How to Get It, The Devils and Out of Africa. Born in 1925, the Oscar winning Watkin initially got his start working as a cameraman in many British documentaries and commercials. A fateful meeting with director Richard Lester would change everything for him and he was hired for Lester's wonderful The Knack...and How to Get It.





Noted for his innovative work with lighting, Watkin always demonstrated that he can shoot any kind of film in seemingly any kind of condition. Chief among my his finest films that he shot are Ken Russell's The Devils and The Boy Friend. The Boy Friend stands as one of the great examples of how well Watkin can use color while The Devils is perhaps one of the ultimate examples of how light should be used in a film.




The Hotel New Hampshire marked the second time that Watkin had shot Nasatassja Kinski, with the first being 1976's To The Devil a Daughter. Watkin's work on To the Devil a Daughter is quite striking and among its most obvious highlights. Much like Robby Muller he seems to have an inherent understanding of how much power Kinski's face could project, and he photographs her wonderfully in both To the Devil a Daughter and The Hotel New Hampshire.



Watkin's work on Tony Richardson's The Hotel New Hampshire features some of the lushest and purest photography of his life. Speaking from a total layman's point of view when it comes to the art of photography, there is just something really warm about his work with Richardson. Kinski's Susie The Bear is one of her great roles and she is photographed wonderfully in the film, with Watkin's understated style helping to bring out all of the vulnerability, doubt and finally emerging self confidence that Kinski projects.



Watkin would go onto to shoot many films throughout the late eighties and nineties but unfortunately he never worked with Kinski or Richardson again. He shot some lovely underrated films in the nineties including Jane Eyre but he will undoubtedly be most remembered for his work in the sixties and seventies with directors like Lester and Russell. His last film according to IMDB was the little seen Kirsten Dunst feature, All Forgotten. Ironic title for his final film considering the term 'forgotten' will never be used in describing the incredible career of David Watkin.





Back to The Hotel New Hampshire, Richardson's direction has been called erratic here, but I think it is more a case of him embracing once again all of the power and invention that so defined his greatest years in the sixties. Like a free-form jazz musician playing with time signatures and bending notes into something near alien, Richardson's direction of The Hotel New Hampshire is fresh, inventive, purposely sloppy at times, and never dull. It is the penultimate, near great, theatrical work by a very talented filmmaker, and it didn't deserve the savaging it got back in 1984.




The cast of The Hotel New Hampshire is indeed quite extraordinary. Jodie Foster was at a weird transition point in her career but you can already see her developing into America's best actress. She is saucy, sad, funny, and very human in the part of Frannie. I like Rob Lowe a lot here too. He is forced to play kind of the calm at the center of a very electric storm, and his work is very centered and very solid. The likes of Beau Bridges, Wallace Shawn, Matthew Modine, and Anita Morris seem incapable of giving weak performances and that is no different here, as they are all splendid.




The casting of Kinski in the role of Susie The Bear was much talked about, and it remains the most controversial of the film. In the book, the character was short, homely, and dirty. It was easy to see why she would be so insecure as to wear a bear suit to disguise her ugliness...but Nastassja Kinski? Why would Tony Richardson cast one of the most beautiful women in cinematic history in this part?



What could be more devastatingly sad and tragic, than an unquestionably beautiful person so wrapped up with inner turmoil, self doubt and insecurities that she literally hides herself from the world behind a mask? Richardson had the idea that someone who was completely wrong about themselves would be much more effective than someone who was right. Susie The Bear in Richardson's film doesn't hide herself because she is ugly, she hides herself because she thinks she is ugly. There is a big, and profound, difference there. Kinski is asked to do the impossible here, namely to make you believe that she thinks she is so hideous that she should hide inside a bear costume. Kinski delivers on this completely, and gives the most fragile but cutting work of her career. The role had a big impact on Kinski and she would tell The Washington Post that, "...it touched something deep...What is reality and what Susie sees about herself are two different things. Something melts inside Susie so she can take off the bear suit. This happened to me. There is a beauty about myself that I never saw, or I rejected, until recently."






The film had few supporters at the studio but John Irving admitted that, "I liked the movie nonetheless. Tony's interpretation of the novel as sexual cancan is a much more suitable translation of my sense of humor than Steve Tesich's dialogue in The World According to Garp. But, to most audiences, The Hotel New Hampshire was not nearly as successful a film as Garp. Only in some countries in Europe was it more popular, which may have been the result of Hotel being more popular in parts of Europe as a book, too--I mean more popular than Garp."




Many critics had there knives sharpened and out for Richardson and his young cast. Frankly the little respect I had left for critics like Vincent Canby and Rex Reed has vanished completely after reading their incredible rude and sexist comments concerning Jodie Foster's appearance in The Hotel New Hampshire. Canby wrote, "she had better watch those malteds between classes at Yale" while Rex Reed added, "Foster is pasty, pudgy and too asexual to attract gnats". Way to review the film at hand you self absorbed twits.





The film's mixed reception saw mild praise coming from the likes of Shelia Benson, Richard Combs and John Coleman and absolute hatred from the likes of David Denby and Andrew Sarris, who wrote in The Village Voice: ""A funny thing happened on my way to reviewing The Hotel New Hampshire, I encountered some people who actually liked it! Why would, how could, anyone enjoy this botched mess, this shambles of a movie? Kinski, for once pleasantly at home in a wildly disorganized circus in which she does not have to labor in vain to make sense as a character...I would have had serious problems with The Hotel New Hampshire even if it had been a better movie...the wrong reasons for liking it (are) cultural snobbery, generational complacency, moral flabbiness, and the nihilism of convenience."






The Hotel New Hampshire opened up in the spring of 84 and disappeared soon after. The film is currently available on a sharp looking Widescreen DVD, with only the trailer as an extra. It is a rewarding if, at times, gloriously frustrating experience that gets better and better with each viewing. The great Tony Richardson would complete just one more theatrical picture in his life, the Jessica Lange film Blue Sky, before passing away in the early nineties. While The Hotel New Hampshire isn't one of his greatest films, it is one of his most heartfelt and inventive. It occupies its own very special place in Richardson's important filmography...needless to say, it deserves another look.