Hotels

 

Summer is the time for many people to travel especially before school starts and it made me think of where we travel and we we hang our hats at night. Many love the hotels and it got me thinking of these films like What's Up, Doc, The Best Exotic, Marigold Hotel, The Grand Budapest Hotel and If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium. These are some of my most favourite films of mine but I chose 3 more that I love…

1. THE LAST LAUGH-1924

I recently watched this powerful film, directed by the great F. W. Murnau, starring Emil Jannings as a proud man who works at a prestigious Hotel as the main footman who opens the doors for the patrons, takes care of their bags and helps them in their daily needs. When he comes home to his neighbourhood, the residents think he is grand for holding such a great employment. They are all preparing for his niece’s wedding when, Emil’s jerk of an employer, decides Emily is too old to hold his position and asks for his coat and demotes him to bathroom attendant. This proud man is destroyed by this uncaring demotion and his own neighbourhood now think he was lying about his position and demean him even more. Honestly, how many have held a good job to only lose it due to “ restructuring” . We can relate to this film in many ways and the direction, acting and cinematography by Karl Freund  are exemplary. It evoked immense sadness in me and regardless of the ending, which Murnau was forced to add on by the studio, this is one of the great films of silent cinema and cinema of the last 100+ years.

2. GRAND HOTEL-1932

This is the epitome of hotel movies where Lewis Stone states how many people come here and year, nothing happens. HA!  We have a large assortment of people whose lives will be forever changed after staying in this Berlin Hotel. You have a brutish lout( no, not Trump) who comes to this hotel with his secretary/ mistress. A ballerina( that’s too funny because Greta Garbo is not, what I call, elegant) who wishes to be left alone, a penniless Baron, played by John Barrymore, who marks Greta as his meal ticket, you also have a sweet but dying man, played by Lionel Barrymore, who is living his final dream. We watch how the mistress feels more than just a whore when in the company of the sweet old man, the Baron falls for the ballerina and vice versa and the bullying, bankrupt lout, played by Wallace Beery, is just whom he appears to be. It’s a lot of fun, opulent and you get to hear Garbo saying how she wishes she could be left alone.

3. SILK STOCKINGS-1957

This is one of my favourite musicals, which I say about most musicals but I do know this was Cyd Charisse’s favourite of her films and she shows some of her best work in this fun movie based on the film, “ Ninotchka” that starred Garbo. Cud is sent, from Russia, to retrieve 3 comrades from Paris who seem to have been taken by the capitalist decadence in Paris. When she arrives she is dressed in brown but that does not deter Fred Astaire who falls for this beauty. Many scenes take place in this decadent hotel and Ninotchka succumbs to the charms dancing in a closet most of us dream about. Unfortunately, when the composer, who has allowed Astaire to change his classical pieces to fit the hip, he and Ninotchka are appalled and feel rooked, leaving Gay Paris to go back to soot laden Russia. The hotel is a great backdrop with many dance numbers happening in the walls of this majestic hotel( that we could never afford to stay in). When watching Astaire, it is hard to believe he was 58 years old here and Cyd is just her best in every way, we even get to see Peter Lorre dance!

Which hotel movies can you think of?