What's it like to live in an aging New York hotel. Most movies would weave a story into the precincts and turn the film into entertainment. Or, if more literally minded, maybe a documentary would result where denizens tell their stories to the camera. An artier approach, on the other hand, might juxtapose selected images into some kind of symbolic narrative that stimulates the imagination. This one-of-a-kind movie, however, does none of these, resulting in an approach unlike I, for one, have ever seen.
For the first half of the hour-plus, a static camera lingers on a particular hotel interior for as much as 90-seconds per scene, creating a rather disturbing sensation as we wait for the frame to change at the expected movie tempo (they don't call them "movies" for nothing). But, contrary to expectation, there is no movement, except for an occasional shadowy figure moving quickly in and out of the static frame. The camera, however, doesn't follow the figure in expected movie fashion, but instead stays fixed on the vacated part of the hotel interior. It's the vacancy of the frame that's being emphasized here, not the transient human occupants who seemingly come and go in an indistinct, anonymous manner. And since the entire film is soundless, the disorienting effect is compounded.
In a later segment, the camera begins a super-slow dolly down succeeding hotel corridors, each closely walled in by a narrowness illuminated only by hotel lighting with dim pools of light and shadow. The effect is to create a sense of claustrophobic confinement and unease. These empty corridor shots are emphasized throughout, tunneling our vision onto some kind of obscurely defined distance. The overall effect of both these main movie parts is of textures or what might be called a fabric of vacancy, confinement and impersonality, at least that's what I'm getting from the filmmakers' exotic technique.
The last part presents views from the roof (I think) in super-slow camera pans, resulting in a somewhat panoramic picture of the New York skyline, and a dehumanized one it is, that is, until the camera bends to a street scene below showing cars in motion, but too far removed to reveal real pedestrians. (I'm not sure if this final reveal needs a "spoiler alert"!) The cars too are confined, in this case by narrow city streets, suggesting an application of the hotel corridors to the outside world, as well.
A couple of frames are worth noting. One lingers on an aging, well-dressed man sitting alone in a hotel room. He's perfectly still for the entire time as if he too is part of the furnishings. It's the only time a full figure is revealed and made a subject. I assume he's the room's occupant and emblematic of the hotel as it once was. The other is a dimly lit corridor frame, blackened at the far end, until, that is, a door opens briefly, but we can't tell why. This occurs a number of times at odd intervals for no apparent reason. In most contexts, such mysterious events would be spooky. Here, the openings and closings are more curious than spooky, as if the neighbors down the hall are beyond our reach.
All in all, I'm not sure what to say about the film or its odd technique. Neither are easy ones to like, but then I don't think the movie was made to please. My guess is that the object is to provoke in an odd way an experience of what living in the hotel is like for its apparently lonely residents. The sequence of frames does follow a kind of spatial narrative as we transition from lobby to roof, even if it is at glacial speed. The effect can also be rather hypnotic as I, for one, began to study those mundane little details of walls, hallways, rooms, ordinarily overlooked in everyday life. In that sense, the technique opens up a fresh look at a common background dimension.
No, it's not a film for everyone, and I have no idea where it would be shown except maybe at film schools. Nonetheless, I think TCM should be congratulated for making such film curiosities available to a broader audience who stand to be provoked by the experience. I know I was.
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