Hotel Paradiso (film)

Hotel Paradiso is a Metrocolor 1966 film released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in Panavision. It was directed by Peter Glenville and based on the play L'Hôtel du libre échange by Maurice Desvallières and Georges Feydeau. The film allowed Alec Guinness to reprise the role he had played in the London, West End theatre production of Hotel Paradiso, which opened at the Winter Garden Theatre, Drury Lane, London. on 2 May 1956. Guinness played alongside Martita Hunt (Angelique), Irene Worth (Marcelle), Frank Pettingell (Cot), Kenneth Williams (Maxime) and Billie Whitelaw (Victoire). Douglas Byng also reprised his part from the stage play.

Plot summary

Playwright Monsieur Feydeau is staying in the Parisian Hotel Paradiso. He needs to write a new play, but has writer's block. He takes the opportunity to observe his fellow guests: Monsieur Boniface, henpecked by his domineering wife, and Marcelle, the beautiful but neglected wife of Henri, a building inspector. Henri is sent to the hotel to investigate rumours of ghosts (which turn out to be caused by drains). However, the hotel is the trysting place of Marcelle and Boniface, who are having an affair.

Guest House

Guest House is a non-profit, charitable organization dedicated to the treatment of Catholic priests, deacons, brothers, seminarians (and - since 1994 - women religious) who suffer from alcoholism, other chemical dependencies and other addictions involving food and gambling. Opened in 1956 in Lake Orion, Michigan, Guest House is the oldest, continuously operating treatment center of its kind anywhere.

Guest House has 68 full-time and 61 part-time employees and an annual budget in excess of $7 million. Guest House operates two licensed and Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Facilities (CARF) accredited treatment centers. The one in Rochester, Minnesota is for priests and male religious and the other, in Lake Orion, Michigan, is for women religious.

History

Guest House was founded by Austin Ripley who was a nationally renowned mystery fiction writer and author of Minute Mysteries, a popular newspaper column featuring solve-it-yourself crime cases, which was syndicated in more than 170 U.S. newspapers.

Guest House Paradiso

Guest House Paradiso is a 1999 British slapstick dark comedy written by and starring comic duo Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson, and directed by Edmondson - his directorial debut for a feature film.

The film is semi-officially based on their comedy television series Bottom (in some territories, the DVD cover refers to it as The Bottom Movie). The key difference in the characters is in their surnames: Mayall's character, known as "Richard Richard" in the TV show, is here referred to as "Richard Twat" (although he regularly and angrily insists on the pronunciation "Thwaite"). Edmondson's character changes from "Edward Elizabeth Hitler" in the TV/live show to "Edward Elizabeth Ndingombaba". Despite this difference, both characters retain the same personalities as their TV counterparts. The film was made at Ealing studios and on location on the Isle of Wight.

Plot

Richard "Richie" Twat and Edward "Eddie" Elizabeth Ndingombaba (Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson) run the worst guest house in the United Kingdom ("You're not in any of the guidebooks. Nobody for miles around - an oasis of calm. Even the peasants in the village denied its existence."), neighbouring a poorly maintained nuclear power station. The chef is not only unable to cook, but is both an idiotic drunkard and an illegal immigrant and eventually leaves due to not being paid ("Have you seen Pascal? Oh, damn. I'll have to phone the psychiatric hospital, he's probably checked himself in again!"). The guests (one of them played by Bill Nighy) are thoroughly dissatisfied by the poor service, and all decide to leave, except for one "Mrs Foxfur" (Fenella Fielding) who lives there.