Moving Pictures Stopping Places: Hotels and Motels on Film

Mobility has long been a defining feature of modern societies, yet remarkably little attention has been paid to the various 'stopping places'\_hotels, motels, and the like\_that this mobility presupposes. If the paradoxical qualities of fixed places dedicated to facilitating movement have been overlooked by a variety of commentators, film-makers have shown remarkable prescience and consistency in engaging with these 'still points' around which the world is made to turn. Hotels and motels play a central role in a multitude of films, ranging across an immensely wide variety of genres, eras, and national cinemas. Whereas previous film theorists have focused on the movement implied by road movies and similar genres, the outstanding contributions to this volume extend the recent engagement with space and place in film studies, providing a series of fascinating explorations of the cultural significance of stopping places, both on screen and off. Ranging from the mythical elegance of the Grand Hotel, through the uncanny spaces of the Bates motel, to Korean 'love motels,' the wealth of insights, from a variety of theoretical perspectives, that this volume delivers is set to change our understanding of the role played by stopping places in an increasingly fluid world. Checking in / David B. Clarke, Valerie Crawford Pfannhauser, and Marcus A. Doel Revisiting the grand hotel (and its place in the cultural economy of Fascist Italy) / James Hay Floating hotels : cruise holidays and amateur film-making in the inter-war period / Heather Norris Nicholson Vacancies : hotels, reception desks, and identity in American cinema, 1929-1964 / Jann Matlock The Swiss hotel film / Roland-Francois Lack Cinematic topographies in time-space : Wim Wenders' hotels / Stan Jones The decay of fiction and the poetics of pastness / Asbjørn Grønstad "Now, where was I?" : memories, motels, and male hysteria / Stuart Aitken "Just an anonymous room" : cinematic hotels and motels as mnemonic purgatories / Katherine Lawrie No sympathy for the devil or lobby music : spaces of disjunction in Barton Fink, The shining and Muzak / Greg Hainge Parallel hotel worlds / Yvette Blackwood No quarter(s), no camel(s), no exit(s) : Motel Cactus and the low heterotopias of Seoul / David Scott Diffrient Off the highway : some notes on stopping places in cinema / Rob Lapsley The real of the screen : Atom Egoyan's speaking parts / Maria Walsh Departure : the 21st century hotel-your media/home aay from home / James Hay. Hotels and motels play a leading role in a wide variety of films. This volume brings together a range of outstanding explorations of the cultural significance of stopping places, both on screen and off.