Plaza Suite tells three stories all set in the same hotel suite over the course of several days. The first story, "Visitor from Mamaroneck," is about a middle-aged woman (Maureen Stapleton) looking back at her 20-something-year-marriage to a successful businessman (Walter Matthau). Trying to liven up a long-dead relationship, she takes him back to the suite where they spent their honeymoon, but he's irritable and distracted by his work, or so it would appear.

In "Visitor from Hollywood," Matthau stars again, this time playing a famous Hollywood producer / womanizer who calls an old flame (Barbara Harris) for a quick fling. He's horny but is turned off, if only fleetingly, because he can so easily use his celebrity status to seduce this otherwise happily married New Jersey housewife.

In "Visitor from Forest Hills," Matthau and Lee Grant play the parents of a young woman on her wedding day. For reasons unknown, she has locked herself in the bathroom, and as dozens of guests wait anxiously downstairs, the older couple screams, cajoles, and pleads with the young bride to come out.

Onscreen credits inform viewers that this is not, as one might expect, an Arthur Hiller film per se, but rather "A Neil Simon Play." And so it is. The film is basically a recording of the popular Broadway show, which opened, appropriately enough, on Valentine's Day 1968, running some 1,097 performances. The movie even ends with the six main characters (played by four actors) making an onscreen curtain call, bowing to the audience. (One wonders, what if the film had bombed?) Hiller, to his credit, gets excellent performances out of his cast right across the board, and generally does a good job keeping the camera focused on what's interesting.

About the only thing wrong with this adaptation of Plaza Suite is how it hedges its bets on the last sequence. The first two segments stay, almost without exception, focused on two people in their hotel suite. Except for some brief introductory shots, showing Matthau, Harris, etc., arriving or leaving the Plaza, the first two segments zero in on the couple and the mini-drama unfolding in their hotel room. "Visitor from Forest Hills," however, moves some of the action downstairs, and cutaways to nervous wedding party guests seem out of place. Worse is the decision to cut to shots of the bride seen through a keyhole, which spoils the wonderful moment when she finally comes out. (On stage this must have been something.) Generally though, the film is admirable for keeping most of the action confined to its handful of actors and a few rooms. This is quite unlike, for instance, the film version of The Odd Couple (1968), which works overtime to open up the play.

The first segment was probably Simon's most mature work up to that time, a complex portrait of a disintegrating marriage with more than two decades of emotional baggage and unexpressed anger. The piece is really a showcase for Maureen Stapleton, whose desperate, unraveling yet resilient wife is a marvel to watch. It was a performance defined by the actress, who played the role – indeed, she played all three women – in the stage version. Matthau, playing a much less complicated character, nonetheless shows here what a fine dramatic actor he was. George C. Scott essayed Matthau's roles on stage, and while one can only envy those lucky enough to have seen that performance, Matthau is up to the task in all three segments.

That said, Matthau is similarly overshadowed in the next sequence by the beguiling, underused (at least in the movies) Barbara Harris. Matthau's character in the first two acts is uncluttered and single-minded, but both women undergo gradual transformations which, in the hands of actors like Stapleton and Harris, are pretty remarkable to witness. Where Stapleton scurries nervously from room-to-room, talking up a storm (mostly to herself), Harris seduction is mostly under the surface. Her performance saves it, really, for Matthau's sleazy, swingin' producer (wearing one of the most ghastly wigs in movie history) today comes off as dated and clichéd, and the piece's portrait of fame-as-seducer doesn't quite live up to its great potential.

The last sequence is much funnier, built on the type of last-minute, panic-filled disasters which seem common to all weddings. There's nothing particularly enlightening about it – it's simply funny, and the jokes all work and both Grant and Matthau are very amusing.

Video & Audio

Shot for 1.85:1 projection, Paramount gives Plaza Suite a decent if unimpressive transfer in 16:9 format. The image shows its age, with a fair amount of grain and tepid color. The Dolby Digital mono sound is fine, and a French audio track is offered, along with English subtitles.

Extras

Once again, Paramount has offered up a bare bones presentation, which doesn't even include a trailer. This sort of thing always strikes me as odd. Why no trailers for other Paramount / Neil Simon films like The Odd Couple or Barefoot in the Park, both of which appear on those respective Paramount DVDs? Isn't Paramount interested in marketing its own movies? Strange.

Parting Thoughts

At a time when seminal, director-driven movies like A Clockwork Orange, The Last Picture Show, and The French Connection were in release, Plaza Suite must have seemed hopelessly mainstream and ordinary. It may not be great cinema, but as a record of a good and popular Broadway play, Plaza Suite still holds up, thanks to Simon's great dialogue and four standout performances.

Stuart Galbraith IV is a Los Angeles and Kyoto-based film historian whose work includes The Emperor and the Wolf -- The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune. He is presently writing a new book on Japanese cinema for Taschen.