The film festival in Cannes was in full swing. The Azure Coast glimmered in all its Gallic glamour and elegance, tricolor flags flapping in the Midi sun. The Variety crew were comfortably lodged in a venerable and slightly dilapidated family-run late 19th century villa called the Hotel Suisse which might have done the honors to the likes of Marcel Proust. The chalet was fronted by a large garden whose scent wafted through the open windows of the dining room, with its decorous sideboard and refined cutlery and table linen. There was an old metal-grilled elevator, with a clanging outer door and a pair of inner doors that opened to the cabin, which was provided with a small seat. At the rear of the spacious high-ceilinged lobby nestled a small reception counter behind which stood the telephone switchboard through which all incoming and outgoing calls had to be made once you connected with the operator. In each guest room a dial-less telephone was attached to one of the walls. Upon picking up the receiver, the persona at the switchboard then rang the number you gave him.
The Hotel Suisse was our home away from home during the two weeks that the festival lasted and where on clement mornings one could take one’s coffee and croissants at a cloth-covered table in the garden. The hotel was located a stone’s throw away from the ocean-front Croisette, the sweeping seaside promenade, upon which stood the venerable Hotel Carlton and the original Palais des Festivals, built in 1949, which constituted the nucleus of the festival.
In the 2005 Variety’s Centennial Souvenir Album, printed on the occasion of the paper’s 100th anniversary party in Sardi’s restaurant in New York, our Berlin correspondent, Ron Holloway, reminisced about the Hotel Suisse as follows:
“It was a place of legends, some say of miracles. Certainly, a haunted hotel of memories for all who recall with an aching heart and maybe a tear on the cheek, what the old Festival International du Film was really like…
“Built around the turn of the century, the old Suisse was run by an elderly Mistral couple who saw no reason to make any improvements at all. The plumbing made frightful noises, the beds sagged and creaked, the wallpaper had telephone numbers scribbled all over it and you could hear the guy yelling Ne quittez pas! at the switchboard down the hall better than the scratchy cacophony emanating from the receiver.
“But the Suisse had a garden and a spreading chestnut tree that is still standing just inside the gate. Some film directors, like Wim Wenders, still go back to that garden out of nostalgia to conduct their Cannes interviews with the outside world. The hotel, the garden and tree were located across the street from the garage in back of the Hotel Carlton. And it was a two minute walk from there to the old Palais des Festivals. Both the Palais and the Suisse are gone now, torn down to make the Noga Hilton and a plastic hostelry — god-awful monuments to progress…”