Four rooms
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Four rooms |
| Original title | Four rooms |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1995 |
| length | 94 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director |
Allison Anders Alexandre Rockwell Robert Rodriguez Quentin Tarantino |
| script | Allison Anders Alexandre Rockwell Robert Rodriguez Quentin Tarantino |
| production | Lawrence Bender |
| music | Combustible Edison |
| camera |
Rodrigo García Guillermo Navarro Phil Parmet Andrzej Sekuła |
| cut |
Margaret Goodspeed Elena Maganini Sally Menke Robert Rodriguez |
| occupation | |
| |
Four Rooms (also known under the German title Silvester in Stranger Beds ) is an episode film by the directors Allison Anders , Alexandre Rockwell , Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino from 1995.
About the film
The film consists of four short stories , which were shot by different directors . The template Penthouse - The Man from Hollywood comes from Roald Dahl . The four episodes each have their own storyline, each set in one of the rooms of a hotel. Page Ted - "The Bellhop" (played by Tim Roth ) - who starts his first night shift at the hotel at the beginning of a New Year's Eve is the central thread that runs through all the stories . In the four rooms he experiences some more or less pleasant adventures that ultimately turn out to be financially profitable for him.
In addition to Tim Roth, Antonio Banderas , Madonna , Quentin Tarantino and Bruce Willis also play . The production company behind it was Tarantinos A Band Apart , the first showing in Germany took place on February 29, 1996, in the United States the film was released on December 25, 1995.
The film was not preceded by a long planning phase. Rather, the four directors met more or less by chance. Since all four make very similar films, the idea of a joint work was quickly made up.
action
In the opening credits, an old bellhop gives his successor, Ted, the keys and tells about his work as a bellhop. He gives Ted the urgent advice not to engage in sexual antics in the hotel.
Honeymoon Suite - The missing ingredient
Director: Allison Anders
OT: The Missing Ingredient
A circle of witches has rented the Honeymoon Suite - consisting of five witches, Athena, Elspeth, Eva, Jezebel and Raven, who want to bring their goddess Diana back to life because they were with them 40 years ago a curse that locked her in a stone. Exactly 40 years later, on Diana's wedding night, when everything happened, the five want to bring her offerings to break the spell: breast milk, virgin blood, sweat of 5 men, tears collected over a year and a man's sperm. Eva, the youngest witch, is responsible for the man's sperm, but instead of collecting it, she swallowed it. The rest of her circle are mad at her because this ingredient is the most important. So Ted (the bellhop) has to act as a sperm donor and gets at least 50 US dollars for a quick number with the beautiful witch Eva. After Ted leaves the room, Diana can be brought back to life.
Room 404 - The Wrong Man
Director: Alexandre Rockwell
OT: The Wrong Man
At number 404, Ted ends up in a dark room, although he actually expected a completely different atmosphere (disco music, dancing and lots of alcohol). The residents of this room are Sigfried and his wife Angela, who both have a penchant for psychosex. Angela is tied to a chair and Sigfried threatens both her and Ted with a gun. Sigfried seems to be madly jealous and Ted fears for his life. In a moment of inattention, Ted almost manages to escape. Then he has to save Sigfried's life at the end of the scene because he suffers a heart attack. However, he admits that it was all just a test to test his wife's love for him. Everyone is happy now, up to the point when Angela lies that Ted has slept with her countless times and comments on his physical condition: "What God did to the dwarfs, he made up for Teddy". However, Ted manages to leave the room undamaged.
Room 309 - The naughty ones
Director: Robert Rodriguez
OT: The Misbehavers
Room 309 is occupied by a family. In order to be able to celebrate New Year's Eve away, the parents hire the page Ted for 500 US dollars as a babysitter for their son and daughter. The father advises the children to behave properly. The two of them make Ted's New Year's Eve hell with constant calls and their actions. While they are ravaging the hotel room, they find the body of a prostitute in their bed. Ted rushes up to room 309 and sees the two children with cigarettes in their mouths and a bottle of liquor in hand. Ted freaks out and doesn't believe a word they say about the body. But when he discovers it himself, he immediately calls the police. But since he talks so badly about the dead woman, the little one rams a syringe into his leg. The room suddenly goes up in flames when the cigarette on the floor lights the schnapps, and to make matters worse, Ted hops on the remote control, which switches on the adult channel on the television. At that moment the father enters the room and asks the children whether they have behaved properly too.
Penthouse - The man from Hollywood
Director: Quentin Tarantino
OT: The Man from Hollywood
Ted is called into the penthouse, where he is greeted by Angela to his amazement. In the penthouse a bet is going on between two men, Chester Rush and Norman (played by Quentin Tarantino and Paul Calderón ), in which Ted is supposed to play a role. The following items are important in this bet: A bucket of ice, a wooden board and a cleaver .
After the first hints about the bet, Ted is unwilling to take on any role and wants to leave. He is then convinced by Chester, and by and by everyone else present, and ultimately $ 100 for a minute of listening, to listen to the whole story.
Norman has bet that he will manage to light his lucky Zippo 10 times in a row. If he doesn't, his little finger will be chopped off, but if he does, he'll win Chester's '64 Chevrolet Chevelle . In this bet, Ted is supposed to take on the role of whoever chops off his finger if necessary. Of course, he doesn't want to participate, but can be changed when Chester offers him another $ 1,000.
However, Norman does not manage to win the bet, because the lighter fails the first time. So Ted chops off his little finger, collects the money and leaves the penthouse. The scene suggests that the hysterically screaming penthouse residents open their fingers to the hospital to have it sewn on again. This episode is based on one of the most famous adult stories by Norwegian-Welsh writer Roald Dahl , The Smoker (also known as Man from the South ).
Connections between the rooms
The episodes are shown chronologically, except for "The Misbehavers" and "The Wrong Man", whose actions overlap.
- At the beginning of “The Misbehavers” Ted hangs two of the three cherries that Eva wears in “The Missing Ingredient” until the first kiss scene with Ted in her hair, on Eva's business card, which is amazingly already on the pin board. Eva holds the third cherry in her hand when the other four witches return and during the subsequent ritual to resurrect the "goddess" Diana.
- Sarah in "The Misbehavers" randomly calls a room in the hotel. The man on the other end is Sigfried from "The Wrong Man" during the first scene of this episode ("There are no syringes here, you threesome. Just a hell of a gun, damn it."). So "The Misbehavers" should actually be the second episode, as it begins well before Ted enters room 404, where "The Wrong Man" is set.
- The party where the ice cream is missing takes place in the room directly above room 404 ("The Wrong Man") - a fact that Ted already spoke to during the introductory phone call to "The Wrong Man" on the plug board in the telephone switchboard of the Hotels could have recognized and the one in the toilet window scene of the drunken party guest (who is probably the caller from the opening scene of this episode and who may recognize the bellboy by his voice) with the quite emphatically choked out "ice cream!" is confirmed.
- In "The Wrong Man" Ted refers to the hexic ritual from "The Missing Ingredient" with his remark about weird voodoo stuff .
- Immediately after Ted left room 404, he bumped into a guest in the hallway who got lost in the hotel and is now looking for the room with the party again. When Ted - still quite stressed by the previous events - does not give the guest any information, he mistakenly enters room 404, where the scenario of "The Wrong Man" begins again with his confession that his name is (also) Theodor.
- Angela appears in "The Wrong Man" and "The Man from Hollywood".
- At the beginning of "The Man from Hollywood" Ted remembers the three previous episodes.
criticism
“An episode film that offers largely entertaining entertainment with macabre accents. A delightful finger exercise which, as a link between the episodes, gives the hotel boy actor the opportunity to pull out all the stops of his skills. "
"Four directors created this episode film and forgot the most important thing: the bang."
“'Four Rooms' is brilliantly cool and 102 minutes are absolutely fun. Here you have fun, it doesn't get boring and thanks to Tim Roth, who leaves a lasting impression, every scene becomes a scream. "
“Four strangely exaggerated short stories [… can] only partially meet the great expectations. Only Rodriguez's ludicrous comic episode deserves the rating of 'outstanding'. […] Allison Anders' and Alexandre Rockwell's segments are, in direct succession, the weak points of the anthology. Anders' story [...] has the right amount of eroticism, but remains without any real surprise or climax. With Rockwell's 'Two Sides of a Plate' the actual story is already lacking, which has no center and no direction. [...] Robert Rodriguez ignites a hurricane in comparison with his masterpiece of frenzied cutting, extreme close-ups and perfect timing [...]. "
The film has a positive rating of only 14% on Rotten Tomatoes . Madonna received the Golden Raspberry for Worst Supporting Actress .
Trivia
- In the comic book episode in the opening credits of the film, there is the sound of the projectile falling to the floor and jingling around there for a moment, before it emerges again from the bell's ear and visibly falls down out of the picture.
- The black and white scenes on television in the episode The Naughty are scenes from Rodriguez's short film Bedhead
- The cigarettes Ted smokes are from the fictional Red Apple brand , which also appears in Pulp Fiction , Kill Bill , Planet Terror , The Hateful Eight and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood .
- Steve Buscemi was actually intended for the role of page Ted, but he canceled for image reasons.
- Bruce Willis, in contrast to his hairstylist, is not mentioned in the credits of the film because he violated the rules of the Screen Actors Guild and starred in the film without a fee as a favor for Quentin Tarantino.
- Originally Richard Linklater should also contribute a part to the film, so it should be called Five Rooms .
- The 1964 Chevelle Malibu featured in The Hollywood Man episode is the same car that John Travolta drives in Pulp Fiction .
- In the episode The Naughty Children watch the same cartoon that Ritchie sees in From Dusk Till Dawn .
- The first part of The Man from Hollywood is completely uncut, which is noticeable, among other things, by the fact that Tarantino chokes on his champagne.
- The dancer on the erotic channel in the episode The Naughty is played by Salma Hayek.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Release certificate for Four Rooms . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , September 2009 (PDF; test number: 74 798 V).
- ^ Four Rooms. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed October 19, 2016 .
- ↑ TV feature film online
- ^ Thomas Ays : Four Rooms. In: Moviesection.de. Archived from the original on January 26, 2016 ; accessed on September 7, 2019 .
- ^ Four Rooms film review. In: Yahoo . Archived from the original on July 8, 2012 ; accessed on September 7, 2019 .
Web links
- Four Rooms in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Four Rooms atRotten Tomatoes(English)
- Comparison of the cut versions DVD: VCL (2nd edition) - DVD: Arthaus / Kinowelt by Four Rooms at Schnittberichte.com