CHICAGO, IL: Hotel Imperial ('27) - Sat., June 8, 2019
Posted: Wed Jun 05, 2019 5:41 pm
Saturday, June 8 @ 11:30 AM / Music Box Theatre
co-presented by The Chicago Film Society
HOTEL IMPERIAL
Directed by Mauritz Stiller • 1927
Live organ accompaniment by Music Box house organist Dennis Scott
“Out of the riotous welter of war, love, and empire-shaking intrigue, roars this great melodrama—Hotel Imperial! Pola Negri’s greatest by far!” bellowed Paramount, emphasizing the salability of a film they likely feared exhibitors would be too quick to dismiss as a specialty item. The height of Hollywood’s polyglot cosmopolitanism from the most continental of studios, Hotel Imperial was based on a 1917 play from Hungarian writer Lajos Biro, directed by Swedish pioneer Mauritz Stiller, produced by German UFA exile Erich Pommer, and built around the peculiar glow of Polish star Pola Negri. The titular hotel stands as a bygone luxury in war-torn Galicia, with the Russian army advancing on Austro-Hungarian forces. An escaped Hussar (James Hall) finds refuge in the Hotel Imperial and poses as the establishment’s butler with the help of housekeeper Anna (Negri), who must fend off the amorous advances of a Russian general (George Siegmann) and keep her eyes on an infamous spy (Michael Vavitch). Stiller had achieved immense success in Sweden with films such as Sir Arne’s Treasure and The Saga of Gosta Berling, but it was seemingly only his involvement with the latter’s breakthrough star, Greta Garbo, that brought him to the attention of M-G-M. His stateside career was a series of false starts, pilfered projects, and studio clashes; within a year of Hotel Imperial, he would return to Sweden and die at age 45. This, his only extant American feature, is a rare glimpse of a cinema too fragile to last. -(Kyle Westphal)
85 min • Paramount Pictures • 35mm from Library of Congress, permission Paramount
co-presented by The Chicago Film Society
HOTEL IMPERIAL
Directed by Mauritz Stiller • 1927
Live organ accompaniment by Music Box house organist Dennis Scott
“Out of the riotous welter of war, love, and empire-shaking intrigue, roars this great melodrama—Hotel Imperial! Pola Negri’s greatest by far!” bellowed Paramount, emphasizing the salability of a film they likely feared exhibitors would be too quick to dismiss as a specialty item. The height of Hollywood’s polyglot cosmopolitanism from the most continental of studios, Hotel Imperial was based on a 1917 play from Hungarian writer Lajos Biro, directed by Swedish pioneer Mauritz Stiller, produced by German UFA exile Erich Pommer, and built around the peculiar glow of Polish star Pola Negri. The titular hotel stands as a bygone luxury in war-torn Galicia, with the Russian army advancing on Austro-Hungarian forces. An escaped Hussar (James Hall) finds refuge in the Hotel Imperial and poses as the establishment’s butler with the help of housekeeper Anna (Negri), who must fend off the amorous advances of a Russian general (George Siegmann) and keep her eyes on an infamous spy (Michael Vavitch). Stiller had achieved immense success in Sweden with films such as Sir Arne’s Treasure and The Saga of Gosta Berling, but it was seemingly only his involvement with the latter’s breakthrough star, Greta Garbo, that brought him to the attention of M-G-M. His stateside career was a series of false starts, pilfered projects, and studio clashes; within a year of Hotel Imperial, he would return to Sweden and die at age 45. This, his only extant American feature, is a rare glimpse of a cinema too fragile to last. -(Kyle Westphal)
85 min • Paramount Pictures • 35mm from Library of Congress, permission Paramount