Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join in the fun by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and telling us about them!
Ah, hotels! The glamour! The romance! The allure of travel!
...or at least it used to be, way back when. Nowadays, hotels are either super-luxurious (and thus super-expensive) or cheap cinder-block rooms with barely any class to them at all.
Guess which I prefer?
The Gay Divorcee (Mark Sandrich, 1934) Not the best of the Astaire-Rogers pictures, but one of their earliest and most enjoyable. All the tropes of their films are set here, and in high style (the film received an Oscar nomination for Art Direction) at a European hotel where Ginger goes to stage an affair so she can get a divorce. Edward Everett Horton is her bumbling lawyer (and was there a better, gayer bumbler in Old Hollywood?) and ex-fiancee of her much-married Aunt Hortense (Alice Brady), Erik Rhodes the man she's supposed to get caught with, and Fred of course a friend of Horton's who once nurtured a crush on Ginger. If that all sounds like every other of the pair's films, then let me help: This is the one with "Night and Day", Betty Grable, and the fabulous 20-minute finale to "The Continental".
Last Year at Marienbad (Alain Resnais, 1961) One of the great mysteries of cinema, Last Year at Marienbad sort of defies description at a plot level. It concerns a man and woman meeting at a hotel. He says they have met before, she says they have not. But in the hands of screenwriter Alain Robbe-Grillet, founder of the "new novel", it becomes so much more: a treatise on memory, a puzzle to be solved, a gorgeous bauble to look at as a jeweler looks at a diamond.
Plaza Suite (Arthur Hiller, 1971) Neil Simon wrote three Suite plays (the other two are California and London), and this is the best. Three scenes take place in the same suite at New York's famed Plaza Hotel. These films perhaps don't feel like great choices for adaptations from the stage, as the plays are designed to take place on one set and make good use of the three-act structure, but the star turns from Barbara Harris, Lee Grant, Maureen Stapleton, and of course Walter Matthau, justify the film's existence. If you're allergic to Matthau, stay away, but otherwise, this is an alternately touching and funny picture.
Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers are maybe the greatest duo to ever dance together on the silver screen. They're certainly the most prolific - ten films together, no small feat! Top Hat is their best-known film, and many say it's their best, but the final number ("The Piccolino") is a dud, and it's always left a bad taste in my mouth whenever I watch Top Hat. No, my favorite Fred & Ginger film has always been Swing Time, if only for the songs: "Never Gonna Dance", "The Way You Look Tonight", "A Fine Romance", and this one right here, "Pick Yourself Up," which is unfortunately presented as a pure dance number - just an instrumental with no lyrics.
But who needs singing when the dancing is this great? The story is that Fred's character, dancer and gambler Lucky Garnett, must make $25,000 in order to marry the gal he's in love with. While in New York, he gives his last quarter (which just so happens to be his "lucky quarter") to Ginger's Penny Carroll. His friend Pop steals it back for him, but Penny thinks it was Lucky. He follows her to her work. Naturally, she's a dance instructor, and naturally he apologizes for what happened by taking a lesson from her, and naturally he pretends he's terrible. When her boss fires her, Lucky professes that she actually taught him a great deal, and they launch into this, the first musical number of the film.
It's all in one take, and they use the whole space - even going over the barrier around the dance floor. It's often been said that dance in the Astaire & Rogers films was akin to sex, but this is all innocent fun. I particularly love how Ginger is marking (or, if you're inclined to be less charitable, faking) the tap steps, and how she spins like she's out of control, waiting for Fred to catch her and lead her, since this number really is his show. At the same time, though, they still feel like equal partners. It's just pure bliss - as most of their dances together are. I'm not sure this is my favorite dance of theirs (it might not even be my favorite in this film), but it's up there.
