Four Rooms
Here are some production stills — sets without actors. Look at them intently. Travel into them. Then wander about like Greta Garbo in QUEEN CHRISTINA, touching everything in the rooms, getting to know them physically.
OK, so this one isn’t technically a room.
Remember the wise words of Werner Herzog — “I have never attempted to film in a place which I have not first physically experienced with my body.” Now you’re getting it.
You have seen this film — I can say that with some confidence. But what is it?
May 14, 2011 at 2:35 pm
Are the tags a clue?
May 14, 2011 at 2:40 pm
I’m going for Singin’ in the Rain, but I can’t positively identify anything.
May 14, 2011 at 2:44 pm
“Clip, clip here…clip, clip there….”
May 14, 2011 at 2:57 pm
“Can you even dye my eyes to match my gown?”
May 14, 2011 at 3:10 pm
The second set looks enormously like the reception desk of GRAND HOTEL, the first and the last *could* be from the same film, but the third couldn’t possibly be … unless it’s something sneaky like the backdrop for Grusinskaya’s ballet. Damn your devious hide, DC.
May 14, 2011 at 3:15 pm
Randy has got it (not Singin’ in the Rain or Grand Hotel) but the rest of you will have to catch his clue.
They’re all MGM. I forget what the others are, but I think you’re right about Grand Hotel for the lobby. If, like me, you have a copy of When the Lion Roars carefully positioned on your living room floor so you can stub your toe while crossing the room, you can look them up…
May 14, 2011 at 3:15 pm
Oh, ALL the same film? I thought last one was OZ, but GRAND HOTEL seems a better fit for all four.
May 14, 2011 at 3:17 pm
See the top photo here: http://divadebbi.blogspot.com/2010/10/im-so-vein.html
May 14, 2011 at 3:22 pm
I’m tremendously disappointed they’re not all from the same film. Someone please make up a story that would use them all. (And I still think the absence of color in the last counts as misleading — dare one say, a red herring?)
May 14, 2011 at 3:24 pm
Of course, knowing MGM, it could have been THE LOWER DEPTHS.
May 14, 2011 at 4:05 pm
Translating Werner Herzog: “Before I start shooting I fuck the furniture.”
May 14, 2011 at 4:06 pm
Seems to be some confusion. Number 4 is indeed Oz. 2 is Grand Hotel. I’ll hold off and see if anyone guesses the others, but we may never know re the top image because it doesn’t seem to be in the book.
Love the idea of MGM making an opulent Lower Depths — their version of The Subterraneans already hints at this. I don’t know what story would unite the four sets, but Norma Shearer would feature heavily.
May 14, 2011 at 4:10 pm
1 and 2 have the same painting on the wall, the sofas in front look slightly different though – could it also be Grand Hotel?
I thought of Sunset Blvd. at first but the amount of sofas doesn’t look very domestic.
May 14, 2011 at 4:48 pm
#1 seems to be the same set as #2. And I just noticed Lee beat me to the punch on OZ… I hadn’t seen Lee’s post before, honest!
May 14, 2011 at 5:01 pm
Apologies — and welcome! — to the esteemed Mr Tsiantis, whose post didn’t appear at once due to the WordPress sentinel sitting on it.
Ah, so they’re both Grand Hotel, how about that. Is IS a very grand hotel, I must say.
May 14, 2011 at 9:05 pm
3. looks a little like Isle of the Dead…all it needs is a woman in a white gown holding a triton
May 14, 2011 at 9:39 pm
#4 is the salon where the Cowardly Lion gets his mane curled. He was SUCH a ka-ween!
I see Norma Shearer trying to be all sexy in #1. And not succeeding (with me, at least). Nothing but the most luxe for Mrs. Thalberg.
#3 is from the aborted experimental MGM film “Last Year, Mary Ann Bad,” which Shearer abandoned because she couldn’t make heads nor tails of the script. It set co-star Robert Young’s career back a year or two.
May 14, 2011 at 11:19 pm
There IS a Lewton connection with 3, because he and Tourneur handled the second unit on… Marie Antoinette, with our Norma.
May 15, 2011 at 2:06 pm
Damn, damn and double damn! I thought it might be Marie Antoinette, which I watched two weeks ago (in 16 YouTube segments) in my pursuit of every frame that John Barrymore committed to celluloid. Then a Saturday night out got in the way of checking my hunch, and now it’s too late. So I hope you’ll remove that sceptical look and take my word for this..
May 15, 2011 at 4:23 pm
Nobody would come out with a yarn like that unless it was true!
Seems like people are starved for quiz-time here. I ought to get the Shadowplay Impossible Spring Film Quiz out of mothballs.
May 16, 2011 at 9:01 am
Ah, MARIE ANTOINETTE, the film that warped my view of French politics forever after! Even today, I can’t get over the fact that people think the 1789 Revolution was a good idea.