THE IDEAL PLACE FOR COMEDIES AND THRILLERS

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THE GRAND HOTEL ISTHEPERFECTS CENE

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Doors that open and close to the pressing rhythm of misunderstandings, intrigues and shots. Corridors and stairways as action antechambers. Dazzling salons, luxury restaurants, bars for erotic encounters, tabarins with crooners, seductive singers and wild dancers. Perfect cornices for super exciting stunts, rooftops designed for romantic dates or deadly showdowns. Adjoining bedrooms in which love and betrayal are consumed. The spa where business and love affairs are combined. The halls that tie and unravel intrigue. And then, sui generis characters like the doorman, the barman, the concierge, the liftman and the bellboy, "people" - as great journalist Carlo Rossella writes - "suffering from loneliness, and who always have a great desire to blow the whistle. Lots of journalists must thank them if they got the scoop". With all these situations available, over the years the Grand Hotel in the city and metropolitan version has proved to be an ideal set for romantic and sophisticated comedies, for murder mysteries and thrillers. Among the first examples, we can mention the short film Mabel's Strange Predicament (1914) directed by Mabel Normand, Roscoe Arbuckle's The Bell Boy starring Buster Keaton and himself (1916), and Passing the Buck

(1919), the hilarious story of a robbery at the hotel. However, in these cases, the hotel environments were reconstructed in the studios, as it happened for the Grand Hotel (1932), the first attempt of using the luxury hotel as a location in the era of sound film. From then on, and especially after the war, the real hotels would be the protagonists. From the Ritz in Paris to the Savoy in London, from the Fairmont in San Francisco to the superdéco Beverly Wilshire in Los Angeles, from the Grand Hotel Europa in Prague to La Mamounia in Marrakech; and in Italy, Hotel des Bains in Venice, Hotel degli Orafi in Florence and the Regina Palace in Stresa. Just to give some examples of such a crowded category which, according to Halliwell's Who's Who in the Movie, the true film bible, counted over 100 titles in 2006.