starring Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery, Lionel Barrymore
directed by Edmund Goulding
112 minutes
Several people's lives intersect over the course of 24 hours at the Grand Hotel in Berlin.
Baron Felix von Gaigern (John Barrymore) isn't what he claims to be. He's really a thief who owes money to loan sharks. He has agreed to steal enough jewelery from one of the other guests to pay off his debts.
Famous ballet dancer Grusinskaya (Greta Garbo) is depressed. her jewelry is the Baron's intended target. He has been sending her flowers which she has been ignoring. Her mood doesn't change until he charms her into believing that he broke into her room because he was concerned for her well being.
Flaemschen (Joan Crawford) is a stenographer who has been hired to work for Preysing (Wallace Beery), the director of a rag manufacturer. His company is on hard times. He hopes for a merger with another company and to get Flaemschen to do more than what she has officially been hired to do.
Bookkeeper Otto Kringelein (Lionel Barrymore) has been given a terminal diagnosis. He is an employee of Preysing's company. Kringelein has decided to spent his last days living it up at the Grand Hotel. Preysing has no idea who he is even after he introduces himself.
This isn't a long movies but I thought it started kind of slowly. It wasn't until about the halfway mark that it started to get interesting. Everything up to that point felt like introductions and prologue to what plays out in the second half of the movie.
There seemed to be an excessive amount of soundtrack in the first half of the movie.
Grand Hotel won the Academy Award for Best Picture. It is the only film to have won the award without being nominated for any other Academy Awards.
All the performances are good but it definitely felt a bit clumsy and loose in places. I learned to accept some things at face value but I didn't feel that the way things were explained was fully backed up by the way it was put together. There's potential in the story that isn't fully realized in the finished product.
DVD Extras
The following DVD extras were included on the disc that I borrowed from the library.
Checking Out: Grand Hotel (2004, 12 minutes) - A documentary short which highlights many facts about the casting, making of, and distribution of Grand Hotel.
Hollywood Premiere of Metro Goldwyn Mayer's Grand Hotel (9 minutes) - Newsreel coverage of the opening night of Grand Hotel at Grauman's Chinese Theatre.
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