Hotel Imperial ** (1939, Isa Miranda, Ray Milland, Reginald Owen, Gene Lockhart, J Carrol Naish, Curt Bois) – Classic Movie Review 10,942

‘TRAPPED BY LOVE IN THE MAD MAELSTROM OF WAR! ‘

Director Robert Florey’s 1939 drama Hotel Imperial stars Italian actress Isa Miranda as Anna Warschawska, a dancer from the Balkans who masquerades as a chambermaid while looking for the man who caused her sister’s death in 1916. Ray Milland plays Lieutenant Nemassy, the Austrian officer who helps her to uncover the killer.

Hotel Imperial is a costly, handsome-looking film, but it is dramatically turgid, undynamically directed and weakly acted (with Miranda struggling against her lack of English and Milland battling a nothing role), and cannot escape its origins in the melodrama of silent cinema.

Reginald Owen also stars as General Videnko, an eccentric Russian with a passion for painting, who asks Anna, who has taken up modelling, to pose for him.

It is based on the story Színmü négy felvonásban by Lajos Biró.

Unfortunately the film’s history is more interesting than the movie. It was first made as a silent in 1927 with Pola Negri. Then this new version was half finished in 1936 as I Loved a Soldier with Marlene Dietrich, who quit, to be replaced by Margaret Sullavan, who in turn broke her arm, and the project stalled. This film was completely rewritten for Miranda, abandoning Lajos Biro’s original play, and then flopped, while Milland was badly hurt during filming. A bad karma drama then.

Also in the cast are Gene Lockhart, J Carrol Naish, Curt Bois, Henry Victor, Albert Dekker, Robert Middlemass, Michel Werboff, Spencer Charters, Betty Compson, Basil Rosing, Bert Roach, Paul Everton, Lee Shumway, Davison Clark, Russell Hicks, Stanley Andrews and Harry Holman.

Hotel Imperial is directed by Robert Florey, runs 80 minutes or 67 minutes, is made and released by Paramount Pictures, is written by Gilbert Gabriel and Robert Thoeren, based on the story Színmü négy felvonásban by Lajos Biró, is shot in black and white by William Mellor and scored by Boris Morros.

It is shot at Paramount Studios, 5555 Melrose Avenue, Hollywood.

Isa Miranda (1909–1982).

Isa Miranda was born Ines Isabella Sampietro on 5 July 1909 in Milan.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 10,942

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