Grand Hotel

"Grand Hotel. Always the same. People come and go. Nothing ever happens." This is the statement that bookends the winner of the 1931-32 Best Picture Oscar, spoken by Lewis Stone as a phlegmatic doctor who bears a large scar on his face, a reminder of the Great War. The hotel in question is in Berlin, the time is the present (the early thirties) when Berlin was decadent. Of course the good doctor is dead wrong, as many things big and small happen over the course of a few days.

Grand Hotel was the first of a kind of film that is common these days: the all-star ensemble. MGM wonderboy Irving Thalberg took a play, which in turn came from a novel by Vicki Baum, and signed up a host of stars: Greta Garbo, Lionel and John Barrymore, Wallace Beery and a young Joan Crawford. They all play characters who initially are unknown to each other, but eventually their stories intersect and both comedy and tragedy ensue. This style of story-telling would reach its nadir in the form of TV's Love Boat.

Garbo was a huge star, and this became one of her signature performances. She plays a temperamental ballerina who can barely bring herself to get out of bed let alone go to the theater. It was in this film that she spoke the now immortal line, "I want to be alone." But when she meets John Barrymore, who was the preeminent stage actor of the previous thirty years, but relatively new to film, she falls in love and finds life has a purpose. Barrymore is a penniless nobleman who owes a great deal of money--he was going to rob Garbo, but is too softhearted to go through with it, and he too falls in love. Watching these two together is pure cinema magic, especially when they are both in profile.

John's brother Lionel is Kringelein, a meek accountant who has only weeks to live. He decides to go out with a bang and uses all his savings to live it up. He also takes the opportunity to tell off the owner of his company, a blustering Wallace Beery, who is at the hotel hoping to merge with another company. He has hired Crawford as his stenographer, and she plays a role she would specialize in: the career girl who can see the writing on the wall. The film discreetly suggests that Beery has purchased more than Crawford's dictating skills. She, on the other hand, has fallen for John Barrymore's charm.

This is all great fun, and though there is a murder at the end the mood remains fizzy, especially buoyed by Lionel Barrymore's effervescence as a little guy living large. Crawford is also very impressive, giving a much more modern style of performance. And it's wonderful that John Barrymore did make a few good film roles before his death.

The film is the only Best Picture winner which did not get nominations in any other category. The director was Edmund Goulding, and there are some clumsy transitions (perhaps this is due to an aged print) and some left-over silent film acting styles, particularly from Garbo. It's a very entertaining picture, though.