HOTEL

US, 1967, 124 minutes, Colour.
Rod Taylor, Catherine Spaak, Karl Malden, Melvyn Douglas, Merle Oberon, Richard Conte, Michael Rennie, Kevin Mc Carthy.
Directed by Richard Quine.

Hotel is a blockbuster based on a blockbuster novel – written by Arthur Haley, the popular author of Airport which was soon to become an even bigger blockbusting film.

The film is interesting in its mix of characters, with Rod Taylor as the manager of the hotel, various veterans like Karl Malden and Melvyn Douglas and Richard Conte around as well as the glamorous Merle Oberon as the duchess.

The film is popular soap opera material, sketches of characters, melodramatic interactions, romance, intrigue. These are the popular ingredients for so many of this big-budget material from the mid-1950s to the 1970s.

The film was directed by actor-turned-director Richard Quine who had made a number of popular films in the 1950s including My Sister Eileen, The Sold Gold Cadillac and Bell, Book and Candle. He made some melodramas in the 1960s including Strangers When We Meet and The World of Suzie Wong. Other good films included The Notorious Landlady – but, by the end of the 1960s he was confined to television material and projects that did not really appeal to him. His final films were Peter Sellers parodies, The Prisoner of Zenda and The Fiendish Plot of Doctor Fu Manchu.

1. Why is this the kind of film wide audiences enjoy? The hotel atmosphere, the people, the glamour, the crisis? Do they identify with this kind of film or enjoy watching the episodes?

2. Did this film deal with real people? Or were they melodramatic, popular-literature types of people?

3. What comment did the film's theme have on the state of the US? the changing styles of the world, financial deals, the old world of New Orleans? Which aspects of the film illustrate this best?

4. What did the film have to say about change? What did the St Gregory Hotel stand for? Was it necessary for the Hotel to change? Was it necessary for Warren Trent to change? What kind of change did Curtis O 'Keefe stand for?

5. Were the hotel details presented interestingly for the audience - the people who work there, the ordinary jobs, cleaning, the house detectives, management, the bars, the entertainment?

6. What comment did the film make on big financial business: O 'Keefe and his poor origins, his greed and his ambitions (his prayers and trust in God) his vulgarity? mechanisation? The aims of real estate people: pulling down the hotel and building big skyscrapers? The unions and the union boss and their ownership and the rules and deals necessary? The use of tricks by various parties for financial perposes: the black couple and the adverse publicity? The changing hands of money - higher salaries, bribes? What moral comment on big business did the film make?

7. Peter Mc Dermott? What kind of man was he? In origins similar to O' Keefe yet different development? How did the two contrast with each other? How did Mc Dermott run the hotel? his relationship to Trent, increasing business, his availability, his politeness and honesty, his knowledge of all the employees etc?

8. What did Warren Trent stand for, his father's building the hotel, his management of the inn, his ambitions to make it a welcome place for visitors, yet representative of the old southern New Orleans world? Why could he not understand change? Why was he persuaded by M Dermott to change? Was he happy at the end?

9. Curtis O 'Keefe as a character? As the typical modern American business man with ambition but with little feeling, using people and expecting to get his own way (with explicit help from God)? Was he at all likable or admirable? his relationship to Jean? His using her? that he did not win?

10. Jean, her explanation of her Paris background, her being with O Keefe for money and security, 'a hard kid'? Why did she think Mc Dermott different? Did she agree to use him? What was her role in the hotel dealings? Was it credible that she should stay with Mc Dermott at the end?

11. The Duke and the Duchess, aristocracy and what they expected from people? Their crisis? The ingenuity of the Duchess and her using others especially Dupers? The Duke as a career diplomat, yet a drinker? did the film make enough of the manslaughter of the child? Or did it emphasize too much on the plight of the Duke and the Duchess? How interesting was their story? Why did the Duke eventually decide to confess? Was it credible that the Duchess would not accept blame? What effect did this have on Dupers? Why? Was the Duchess as admirable as the police thought? Why?

12. Dupers - as a man? as a detective, unreliable, a blackmailer, his being prepared to pay the Duchess, his amazement when she did not betray him?

13. The key theft? Karl Malden's betrayal: the risks that he undertook? the ingenuity of his trade? his going to the night club, the actual execution of the robberies, his perpetual smiling the musical theme that accompanied him? the close escape, his being caught in the lift, his being caught and taking the ash tray? What did he add to the film?

14. How dramatic were the crises and how were they handled? The business crises, the black African crisis, the lift crisis?

15. Was the lift episode melodramatic? Was it an easy was out for the Duke to die? Note the effect it had on the people staying in the Hotel?

16. The black American - what comment did this make on New Orleans and the film?

17. How significant for the film was the ending? The fact that the hotel was lost, that the real estate people had won? and that change had occurred despite good will towards the hero?

18. Comment on the choice of musical themes that accompanied different characters.