by Douglas
Messerli
Ralph Smart
(screenplay, based on a story by Philip MacDonald), Michael Powell (director) Hotel Splendide / 1932
This
gang world little gem, Hotel Splendide, was a British “Quota quickie,” one
of the movies made on the cheap to satisfy the 1927 law that 20% of all films
released in Great Britain had to be shot at a British studio with a UK producer
and with 75% of salary costs paid to British cast members. Since US
distributors had now begun to take over British theaters, the US studios often financed
such “British made” films which usually ran at about an hour in length and were
perceived as films that might accompany a feature that was usually US backed.
Sadly, 60% of the Quota quickie films have been lost.
But Michael Powell’s film fortunately
remains as a perfect example of the great filmmaker’s early works. Much of it
doesn’t make sense. Indeed, we hardly get to know the company with whom Jerry
Mason (Jerry Verno) is unhappily employed. He mocks the director and can’t
abide his fellow employees. Fortunately, as in many a film of the 1930s, when
financial fantasies were a requirement to find one’s way out of the morass of
the Depression, Jerry discovers that he has suddenly inherited a seaside hotel
in Speymouth. He quickly leaves his job and rushes off to his new life.
But we have also just seen “Gentleman
Charlie” (Edgar Norfolk) released from jail. Although he was found guilty of a
robbery of pearls, the baubles themselves were never discovered, he having
hidden them under a tree in Speymouth where our hero’s hotel now stands.
Obviously, Charlie and his old partner are also on their way now to the hotel.
There is only one man Charlie fears might stand in his way of recovering his
treasure, fellow thief “Pussy Saunders” named for his affection for his black
feline friend.
The filmgoer almost immediately realizes
that Charlie should have yet another man to fear, the awkwardly nouveau
riche Jerry, who has already been told by this time by the former hotel
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Jerry’s first act is to put up a flag to
turn what really looks more like a boarding house into a real hotel, and the
arrival soon after of Gentleman Charlie and his companion and various
detectives seems to justify his meaningless act. While the whole the flag was
being dug up, the workman discovered the little tin box and tossed it aside.
And, of course, that box, discovered by various of the hotel guests, almost all
of them posing as someone other than they are, grab up the box, put it away in
the hotel safe, and seek to control its contents.
Jerry Mason is clever enough to himself
open up its contents, allowing him, in the end, enough money to support his new
inheritance.
Gradually, the cat leads them all—accompanied
by Gounod’s “Funeral March of the Marionettes” (popularly known as the theme
music for the TV series Alfred Hitchcock Presents)— to Splendide hotel
room number 7, wherein sits Pussy Saunders, who has successfully appeared in
drag as Mrs. LeGrange throughout. Even the British Film Institute, describes
this film as a campy film.
After working at a desk job, director
Michael Powell had himself gone to work with his hotel-owning father at the
Voile d’Or at Cap Ferrat near Monte Carlo. Despite the “Quota” dismissal,
accordingly, Powell sought out to make a serious film comedy, with himself
appearing as the gang member’s bugging device engineer, Marconi.
Los
Angeles, June 6, 2024
Reprinted
from My Queer Cinema blog (June 2024).
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