FILM REVIEWS

Oscar Winners: Grand Hotel (1931-32) B+

Based on Vicki Baum’s novel (and play), adapted to the screen by William A. Drake, “Grand Hotel” was an MGM prestige production, winning the 1931-2 Best Picture. “Grand Hotel” features an all-star cast, demonstrating that MGM had indeed “more stars than there are in heaven.” Seen from the present’s perspective, “Grand Hotel” still serves as an example for a type of film that “Hollywood does not make anymore.”
 
There were at least five star performances, each exhibiting his or her particular screen persona, though best of all were Greta Garbo, as the fading dancer, and John Barrymore, as the declining nobleman. Their scenes together were the strongest in the film, and some of Garbo’s lines, such as “I want to be alone,” became identified with her screen image.  
 
Also good are Joan Crawford as Flaemmchen, the determined secretary; Wallace Beery, as Preysing, her brutish-abusive tycoon-employer; and Lionel Barrymore, as a pathetic dying man named Otto Kringelein.
 
However, the movie as a whole lacks dramatic coherence, and continuity; it’s too much of a patchwork. Each star has two or three “big scenes,” which are replete with message-speeches about the value of life (and death), the transient nature of love. Take Baron Felix von Geigern (John Barrymore), who says to Otto Kringelein (Lionel Barrymore), “A short life and a gay one. That’s my creed.”
 
In several acts, the movie crosses the line between well-acted melodrama and sheer pathos. Thus, Lionel Barrymore tells General Director Preysing (Wallace Beery): “You can’t discharge me! I’m my own master for the first time in my life. You can’t discharge me! I’m sick! I’m going to die. You understand/ I’m going to die, and nobody can do anything to me anymore. Nothing can happen to me anymore. Before I can be discharged, I’ll be dead.” And he does.
 
A layer of cynicism prevails over the melodramatic proceedings, expressed in the speeches given by Dr. Otternschlag (Lewis Stone), who acts as sort of an Emcee: “What do you do in the Grand Hotel? Eat. Sleep. Loaf around. Flirt a little. Dance a little. A hundred doors leading to one hall, and no one knows anything about the person next to them. And when you leave, someone occupies your room, lies in your bed, and that’s the end.”
 
The movie concludes on a bitter note, when Gruskinskaya, unaware of the baron’s death, departs the hotel with her staff, believing they are going to meet later. The first and last words belong to Dr. Otternschalg: “Grand Hotel. Always the same. People come. People go. Nothing ever happens.”
 
Nonetheless, audiences did not mind the stiffness of the dialogue and staginess of the production (Baum’s novel was done as a play), for they turned “Grand Hotel” into the top money-making movie of the year. Reviews for this early sound film were excellent, too. The Motion Picture Herald wrote: “As drama, as comedy, as character portrayal, I rank ‘Grand Hotel’ with the few first-class entertainments on stage or screen. So perfect, so vivid, so well done is this picture that I was not picture-conscious at all. It created an illusion of absolute reality.”
 
“Grand Hotel” competed against seven other movies for Best Picture, including John Ford’s “Arrowsmith,” King Vidor’s “The Champ,” “One Hour with You,” co-directed by George Cukor and Ernst Lubitsch, and Josef Von Sternberg’s “Shanghai Express.”
 
Strangely, none of the star players of “Grand Hotel, or even its director, Edmund Goulding, was Oscar-nominated. The movie is one of the three Oscar-winners to have received only one award. At present, the tendency is for a few films get a large number of nominations and awards, but in the 1930s and 1940s, the votes were spread among a larger number of pictures.
 
Oscar Nominations: 1
 
Best Picture, produced by Irving Thalberg
 
Oscar Award: 1
 
Picture
 
Oscar Context
 
“Grand Hotel” was nominated for only one Oscar, Best Picture. Strangely, no performer of its distinguished cast (Garbo, John and Lionel Barrymore, Crawford) was singled out by the Academy. It vied for the Best Picture Oscar with seven other films: “Arrowsmith,” which received the largest number of nominations (4), “Bad Girl” (3), “The Champ” (also 4), “Five Star Final,” “One Hour With You,” “Shanghai Express,” and “The Smiling Lieutenant.” 
 
Once again, Paramount dominated with three of the eight nominees. MGM had two: the winner and “The Champ.”

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