‘Hotel Imperial’ Unites Great Names of Silent Era

Paramount’s 1927 “Hotel Imperial” (at the Silent Movie Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m.) brought together some legendary names: Germany’s greatest producer Erich Pommer; top Swedish director Mauritz Stiller, who came to Hollywood with his protegee, Greta Garbo, in tow but completed only two pictures here, this being the first; Pola Negri, Gloria Swanson’s chief rival at the studio, and also “Hell’s Angels” co-star James Hall.

It’s not the best picture for any of these people, but it is an historic collaboration and a serviceable wartime melodrama. With a screenplay by Jules Furthman, who would become one of the most important collaborators of Howard Hawks and Josef Von Sternberg, the film takes its title from a charming old hostelry in Galicia. The time is March, 1915, and the Russians have occupied the town.

Negri, as the Imperial’s maid, tries to stave off the advances of the boorish Russian commandant while Hall, an aristocratic officer in the 7th Hungarians Hussars, disguises himself as a hotel waiter for the duration.

Although predictable and conventional, “Hotel Imperial” is a handsome, beautifully made film with a rousing finish that in some ways anticipates Billy Wilder’s more effective “Five Graves to Cairo.”

“Hotel Imperial” is well-teamed with “Speedy” (1928), a delightful Harold Lloyd comedy that finds him a devil-may-care young New Yorker who cheerfully zips from one job to another. His vivacious girlfriend (Ann Christy) is the granddaughter of the owner-operator of Manhattan’s last remaining horse-driven streetcar whose franchise is coveted by avaricious big-money types.

Before Lloyd gets around to saving the day, the film devotes considerable time to the young couple enjoying themselves at Coney Island (where they have some very funny adventures) and to Lloyd’s mishaps as a fledgling taxi driver--including a wild cross-town ride sparked by Lloyd’s desire to get his passenger, none other than the real Babe Ruth, to Yankee Stadium in Brooklyn in record-breaking time.

(Ruth, who gets right into the spirit of the occasion, has got to be the least self-conscious major athlete ever to appear before a movie camera.)

Directed by Ted Wilde, “Speedy” rambles about considerably but always amiably. The film is also a priceless record of the colorful street life and landmarks (several of them sadly gone) of New York at the time. Information: (213) 653-2389.

Among more familiar films--”Dr. Strangelove,” “Paths of Glory,” “Lolita”--in the opening weekend of LACMA’s Stanley Kubrick retrospective is his seldom-seen second film, the 64-minute 1955 “Killer’s Kiss,” which screens Saturday at 10:30 p.m. (after an 8 p.m. showing of “Lolita”).

Best regarded as precocious home movie, it is a familiar, romantic tale of an aspiring but second-rate boxer (Jamie Smith) who falls for a frail blonde taxi dancer (Irene Kane), who is the hapless object of the mad passion of her employer (Frank Silvera, who struggles manfully with this role but to little avail; Silvera also starred in director Kubrick’s long-suppressed first feature, the 1953 “Fear and Desire”).

Kubrick captures well the sordid atmosphere of Times Square, and his final chase scene displays both the bravura and the propensity toward violence that were to become typical of him. Although pretty incredible and further hampered by post-synced dialogue--the film cost only $75,000--it packs enough visual razzle-dazzle to make it fascinating to film buffs as a portent of things to come. For full schedule: (213) 857-6010.