Two sweethearts without money make a suicide pact. They check in at the titular hotel, where they intend to go through with it. In the dining room the guests are celebrating the first communion of a policeman's daughter. Several characters are introduced; prominent amongst them are a prostitute and her lover; comic relief is provided by a cuckold and his wife. During the night, a shot is heard: it is the suicide couple's plan being put into action. The prostitute's lover rushes to the young sweethearts's room, and breaks in...
This drama is not without interest, mainly for unfolding a possible outcome of a failed suicide pact, which it does with a reasonable amount of intelligence. The way the scope of the film is enlarged to bring in an assortment of characters of variable relevance to the main plot is also intelligently done. But this is not a film which made my heart beat faster; its essential artificiality is seldom dispelled, even when minor characters turn it into a slice-of-life display. The author of the source novel was a short-lived socialist who probably intended to bring into focus some of the working-class and lumpenproletariat's problems and idiosyncrasies. His novel came out the same year of Baum's Grand Hotel, which I imagine is the rich people's counterpart of it.
If you can guess which of the above was in this movie, you win a kiss (from your girlfriend).
Rating: 54
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