Hotel Monterey

Chantal Akerman's first feature-length documentary is a look at the Hotel Monterey at 215 West 94th Street in Manhattan. It looks to be a Single Room Occupancy, a type of boarding house that still seems pretty obviously named. We called 'em "SROs" in ironic confusion with a hit Broadway show's "Standing Room Only." I had several friends who lived in SROs back then. They were usually filled with welfare recipients like my friends, and I always thought it was an economically inefficient way to house them. The SROs were privately owned and charged hotel rates, far more than the cost of a series of studio apartments. The SROs my friends lived in offered no services, so how the place looked depended on the roomer. The individual rooms in this movie look clean, well maintained, with decent if cheap linen and drapery typical of a lower-priced hotel in those days, a bit 1970s-gaudily patterned, but easily washed material. Perhaps the Monterey offered services.

The long sequences set in the green-brown corridors where nothing happens is what I have come to associate with Ms. Akerman's documentaries. With no soundtrack, it seems an attempt to show how low-key miserable these people are, stuck in this place like it's the Overlook Hotel. In truth, Ms. Akerman seems to have mistaken specific locations with where people live. My friends may have slept in their SROs, but they lived in New York City, or the library, or inside their heads.

This being Ms. Akerman's movie and not mine, she was free to offer her own view of life in Manhattan. I agree that it's a useful contrast to the glamorous sort of life usually offered in the movies, but just as false and ridiculous. I don't find it interesting enough to stretch out to over an hour. Rather than live in Ms. Akerman's Hotel Monterey, I'd rather live in New York City, or the library, or my head.

If you dragged a person off the street, then showed them this movie, chances are they wouldn't like it. They'd probably find it to be extremely boring, and might even fall asleep. But, for experimental film lovers, and fans of the films of avant-garde filmmaker Chantal Akerman, there is some enjoyment of this hour long look at a cheap New York hotel and those who are staying there.

There is no sound, no characters, only images. It is like a Stan Brakhage film, but much slower. The camera usually stays stationary, and, when it moves, it moves very slowly and steadily. These images require a lot of patience from the viewer, even those who are already used to very slow, very experimental films. Some of the shots in this film are 5 minutes of hardly anything happening! But, I did find a lot of interesting things in the film.

The shots of this hotel are quite beautiful, and the camera movements are very creative, so, overall I'd definitely recommend it to fans of slow, experimental films. Anybody else should probably stay away.

Chantal Akerman is arguably the most important and interesting female director of her era, yet she is sadly under-known here in the U.S. The range of her work is astounding, from largely experimental 'difficult' works like this, to frothy musical-comedy, and just about everything in between. Even if you don't respond to this film, you may well like other things she has done.

Hotel Monterey is an experimental silent 60 minute 'documentary' set in a cheap NY hotel. No story, just images that cross the sadness of Edward Hopper's paintings with the weirdness of David Lynch (who seems to have been influenced by this). It's like a great photo book come to life. It has a fascinating look (very grainy 16mm, with super rich colors). No question that by nature this feels dull in spots and some images are less powerful or repetitive, but its full of wonderful, disquieting moments, and it has a fascinating, hypnotic almost imperceptible build to a 'climax'. If nothing else, the film is worth it for the simple power of the moment when the camera starts to move after 30 minutes of still images.

Hotel Monterey (1972)

*** (out of 4)

I'll admit that I had never heard of this Belgium film before it showed up on the wee hours of the morning on Turner Classic Movies. Even the plot description on my cable service was blank, which is just about right because there's very little "story" in this fascinating documentary. For 63-minutes director Akerman films various aspects of a New York hotel. We get footage of some of the people staying there. Other footage of the hallways as well as a few looks at the rooms there. You might wonder how on Earth any of this is entertaining and half way through the film I started to ask myself why I was so drawn into what I was watching considering there wasn't really anything to watch. There's no even anything to listen to as the film was shot silent so there's no dialogue, no score, nothing. I think what makes the film so entertaining is that you normally watch a movie and wait for the next thing to happen. This happens over and over until the movie is over yet that's not what happens here because you see a single image for fifteen to ninety-seconds and then it just goes to another random image. I think this works because while you're watching and studying one of these images your brain is pretty much preparing you for "what's going to happen next" but when that next thing happens your brain pretty much has to start over with studying the image and again going into the "what's going to happen" mode. I thought the film was extremely entertaining, although I'm sure most are going to grow bored within a matter of minutes. If someone did turn this off after a few minutes I can't say I'd blame them as this isn't a mass appeal movie. I think the ones I'd recommend this to the most are fans of Stanley Kubrick's THE SHINING because it's clear this movie was a major influence on that 1980 masterpiece. There are several tracking shots of the camera going down the halls and around corners, which of course was a major aspect of the Kubrick film. There's also a few shots of the elevators that will remind people of the Kubrick film and just check out how some of the people are shot and again you'll think of THE SHINING.

It's a documentary of a cheap New York hotel where marginalized residents live. Filmmaker Chantal Akerman walks around the hotel during one night with her camera encountering various people. This is completely silent. As an experimental film, it's better than security camera footage. I'm not sure how people felt sitting through this for an hour in a theater. I saw it at home on TCM with other media going on around me. I doubt that I'm getting the same experience. By the time the old man is sitting staring at the camera for an extended time, I had to fast forward the movie at double speed.