Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 6-January-08
Spoiler Rating: Medium

Grand Hotel (1932)

"Grand Hotel" was designed to be a smash and it was, dazzling audiences with a glamorous setting and a star-studded cast and winning the Academy Award for Best Picture. Happily, it has become more impressive with time. With the weight of history behind them, the Hollywood legends, yearning for decency, and somewhat fatalistic overtones of the movie wield remarkable power. Check in and check it out.

The hotel in question is the finest in Berlin between the World Wars. Its suites, lounges, and spectacular atrium witness all there is to see in life, the implication being that the film captures but a smidgen of its infinite tales. A clever opening sequence introduces the players of the moment, including a business executive named Preysing who is brokering a delicate merger (Wallace Beery) and a nebbish named Kringelein who is terminally ill and determined to go out with a bang (Lionel Barrymore). These two already have a connection, since Kringelein works in Preysing's factory (and they represent opposing ends of the social spectrum), but their fates soon intertwine with others as well.

A love triangle of sorts develops between an attractive stenographer called in to document the merger (Joan Crawford), a famous ballerina (Greta Garbo), and a bankrupt baron (John Barrymore). If I had to pick one star from the ensemble it would be the baron, a romantic throwback to ways lost at the beginning of the 20th century. He is a thief, to be sure, with eyes on the ballerina's pearls. Yet he is also dapper and compassionate and distinguished by a sense of honor peculiar for one in his trade, or any trade. He likes and recognizes the stenographer's pluck and positively succumbs to the childlike susceptibility of the ballerina. Their one night of love is bizarre and wonderful. (Garbo hams it up a tad too much, but I guess that is her interpretation of the pampered, high-strung character.)

Inevitably, sorrow stalks among the love with the constant reminder that death awaits and that the need for money dictates the sorry course of many lives. The stenographer agrees to accompany Preysing to England as his secretary (an act of prostitution, essentially), while the baron's conflicting goodness and desperation precipitate a crisis. And in the background the hotel runs as usual, from the phone operators in the cellar to the bellhops in the reception area, with the ebb and flow of guests admiring the fine surroundings into which they have somehow landed. The effect is lavish, absorbing, melancholy, and yes, altogether grand.

Copyright © 2008 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.