Gran Hotel (1944) aka Grand Hotel

Both Jerry Lewis and the Marx Brothers knew a fancy hotel was a perfect setting for a Comedy, but Cantinflas’ team of film makers weren’t quite so sure since they delayed getting there by a little bit just over forty minutes.

First, we spend some time at his vecindad, where there’s to be a Christmas pageant and party and where apparently no one ever pays their rent on time, sometime by years.

After Cantinflas gets one more reprieve, he kindly offers to collect the overdue rent from the other tenants; but not only does he spend the money getting roaringly drunk, he is also late to the party, and additionally ruins it in his drunken state.

Kicked out of his lodgings, he has no recourse but to get a job at a nightclub where he does terribly as a waiter, ...and then he accidentally knocks out an Apache dancer.

Things begin to go well while he’s dancing (a nice blend of him, his stunt double, and his partner’s dummy double,) but by the destructive finale he blows whatever good will he had been building up to that point.

He quits just before he’s fired or killed by the owner.

Next, he lands a bellboy job at a hotel where his girlfriend is working; but despite some confusion about his identity when he gets amnesia (a sequence recalling A Chump At Oxford (1940),) all that develops here is a near emerald necklace robbery that he foils, but complications ensue when the necklace can’t be located because of his memory loss.

The film is made up of three distinct episodes which might all be three different stories for all that they relate to one another.

At least Cantinflas is still in fine, lazy, good for nothing, ignoble tramp mode.

There are some good bits here and there. That Apache dance is a highlight, even when it has no real bearing on anything else.

For once the English subtitles faithfully translate Cantinflas’ logorrhea even when they don’t capture his rhythm and timing.