Grand Hotel (1932)

• Review: *** (out of ****)
• Starring: Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery, Lionel Barrymore, Lewis Stone, Jean Hersholt, Robert McWade, Purnell Pratt, Ferdinand Gottschalk, Rafaela Ottiano, Morgan Wallace, Tully Marshall, Frank Conroy, Murray Kinnell, Edwin Maxwell
• Director: Edmund Goulding
• Screenplay: William Drake (Play: Menschen im Hotel by Vicki Baum)
• Length: 112 min.
• MPAA Rating: N/A

When it was elected Best Picture of the year by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, it seta unique record that stands to this day. It is the only film ever to receive noother nominations and still triumph for the ultimate prize. Grand Hotel is an all-star romp thatbecame a huge success for MGM and still plays well today.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the company that had “More Stars ThanThere Are in Heaven”, created the first ever ensemble cast featuring five oftheir biggest stars: Greta Garbo, John and Lionel Barrymore, Joan Crawford andWallace Beery. If made today, it would be laughed out of the Cineplex but inthe 1930s, the film carried a great deal prestige and made a mint at the boxoffice.

The story revolves around Baron Felix von Geigern (JohnBarrymore) who has been forced to resort to petty thievery to repay hisgambling debts. He stumbles into a love affair with the suicidally miserableballerina Grusinskaya (Garbo). Garbo goes significantly over the top but thatpar for the course at a time when no method of acting prevailed. She was a starbecause she was larger than life and with her faux Russian accent, it was nowonder she was so popular.

Barrymore had a great deal of charm but his role was athankless one with no terribly great or memorable lines. At least Garbo had hernow-famous quip “I want to be alone.” Upstaging as she often was, Crawford’sreserved performance as the strong-headed steno Flaemmchen was the film’s best.Understated, though ultimately rewarding, Crawford made a more unifyingpresence than did John Barrymore who linked most of the stories together. Hisbrother Lionel was also superb as the fatally-ill working man Otto Kringelein.Kringelein, leaving a job that he loathed, came to Berlin’s most luxurious hotel to get awayfrom his worries and live life for once before he died.

Wallace Beery, who would also that year be taking home anOscar for The Champ, gave us anuninteresting businessman who we only come to hate as he tries to seduceFlaemmchen and ridicule his former employee Kringelein. When dealing with apending merger that seems to be faltering, Beery gives us his best work in thefilm lying his way into a deal.

Grand Hotel is oneof those Best Picture winners I could take or leave. It’s a decent film whenlooked at in a historical context. However, it’s not the powerful work theAcademy would recognize two years later in ItHappened One Night. Nevertheless, GrandHotel is an amusing look, even though a fictional one, at the lives of therich and famous long before Robin Leach.

-Wesley Lovell (September 28, 2006)