1932--Grand Hotel, Edmund Goulding

1932--Grand Hotel, Edmund Goulding

Nominated: Arrowsmith, Bad Girl, The Champ, Five Star Final, One Hour With You, Shanghai Express, The Smiling Lieutenant 

Should have won: Freaks 

Be sure to see:Horse Feathers, The Mummy, Scarface the Shame of a Nation

“Grand hotel. Always the same. People coming. People going. Nothing ever happens.”--Dr. Otternschlag

      In what was considered the greatest ensemble cast of its time, Grand Hotel is a film based on a play which was based on a novel by a former chambermaid. The hotel is always busy with people buzzing about, the camera using some impressive tracking shots following one patron to the next. 

 

     The hotel's manager, Preysing, hires a stenographer assistant, Flaemmchen, who would rather be an actress. There is a fight between Preysing and Krigelein, an older man who is in bad health and might be dying, over Krigeliein's dancing with Flaemmchen, keeping her from her tasks. One guest of the hotel is a famous ballerina played by Gretta Garbo who (in a famous line) just wants to be left alone. One night while she is in her room holding a bottle of pills and talking to herself about wanting to end it all, a would-be jewel thief hiding there approaches from the dark. Rather than being scared she is attracted to him. 

 

     There is another fight. There is a murder by telephone...literally. I won't reveal who is guilty or who the deceased is. I'll just say that there was a lot of stuff going on in this film. Two things I did admire were the music and the camera work. There was music playing in the background virtually the entire film. It reminded me a little of American Graffiti how there is a song on the soundtrack practically every second except for the goat killer scene. What I found interesting in Grand Hotel is when the music does stop about an hour and forty minutes in I thought “Huh, the music stopped” and a character in the film says “The music stopped.” I guess we were on the same wavelength. But what I enjoyed most is the swooping camera work. And Preysing is kind of interesting. He is tough, hard-nosed man shown during his fight or how he orders people about. Other times he seems to care about people such as after a card game when Krigelein wins 14,000 marks. Krigelein gets drunk and drops his wallet which Preysing pockets. When Krigelein realizes he's lost it and says he has nothing else in the world, Preysing seems to find a heart. 

 

     Unfortunately I wasn't overly impressed with the movie itself other than that. But some of the behind the scenes tidbits are interesting. Wallace Beery didn’t even want the role until the producer Irving Thalberg assured him he would be the only person in the film using a German accent. After the premier (which was a huge hit) Greta Garbo was supposed to address the crowd. Instead, Wallace Beery came out in full drag and said the line. The gag flopped. All in all the movie is forgettable and I don't recommend it but it does have one bit of trivia that might be the most interesting in Oscar history: Grand Hotel is the only best picture winner to not be nominated in a single other category. One nomination; one win; best picture. You would be better off watching Freaks, the movie that was banned in England for 20 years.  But as a whole, Dr. Otternschlag is correct, nothing really happens.