Grand Hotel, 1/13/13, Best Picture, 1931/32
Grand Hotel is set entirely in the Grand Hotel in Berlin and follows several of its guests over the period of a few days. Grand Hotel is an ensemble movie with some of the biggest stars of the time (less than 5 years after the first talkie), including Lionel and John Barrymore, Wallace Beery, a very young Joan Crawford and Greta Garbo. It’s like a less complicated and less character-rich Gosford Park or Murder on the Orient Express. Garbo plays a reluctant Russian ballerina who utters the famous line ‘I want to be alone’; it wasn’t at all like I imagined it would sound, it certainly wasn’t at all how all of the imitations of the line go ‘I vant to be alone’. The movie won for Best Picture, and the only competing film with which I am slightly familiar is the boxing movie The Champ, so I don’t know if it was ‘the best’, but it was good, and I think if you are interested in the history of film and the very early years and some of the actors that have been called ‘legends’, you should watch it. I like movies where stories and characters intersect, and there are a couple of unexpected twists at the end. Some of the photography and camera angles were very different and out of the ordinary. I think a little Garbo goes a long way, and perhaps it’s more the character of her very emotional prima ballerina that makes her seem so melodramatic as opposed to her actual acting ability. I barely recognized Joan Crawford, but her character is very sweet, but also strong and independent. One trivia fact for you fans of the Academy Awards, Jean Hersholt, the namesake of the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award given out during the Oscars, appears as the Porter in the movie. So, if you like classic movies, movie trivia, and ensemble films, add it to your list; it won’t kill you and you may enjoy it. If you really have no patience for movies that don’t move quickly and there aren’t big action sequences and you’re looking for a life changing movie, you can skip it, and that won’t kill you either.
Just a note: as the Oscars are rapidly approaching, I am trying to see as many of the nominated films as possible so I can be ready once the winners are announced. The hope is not to add too much to my existing list and provide some immediate feedback on the newer films. That’s the hope, but things don’t always work out as we plan (I've learned that much from all the movies I've seen).
