Cinema
Hotel Monterey
Hôtel Monterey
Chantal Akerman · 1972
Synopsis
Without a word, the camera explores a New York hotel where elderly and poor people live. It starts from the lobby and climbs towards the upper floors: the entrance, the inside of the lift, the corridors, empty or occupied rooms, windows. The shots, long and static, framed head-on, last from dusk to dawn, and residents come and go in what was once a splendid hotel.
Context
It is the author's first feature film, shot in 16 mm and in colour, with cinematography by Babette Mangolte and editing by Geneviève Luciani. The hotel stood on 94th Street, in the Upper West Side. The frontal framings and the length of the shots come from the structural cinema she had discovered in New York, and they already set the manner of her following films. The film is released by Criterion with her other works of that decade.
Who it is for
A silent colour film of about an hour, with no dialogue and no plot, which demands patience.
Prizes and reception
An early work in which the stretched-out time and the motionless camera of all the filmmaker's later films are already taking shape.
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