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| The stars align in this splashy poster for Edmund Goulding's Grand Hotel |
At Berlin's Grand Hotel several exciting people reside; the presumptuous diva dancer, the free stenographer, the baron, who has lost everything and steals from everybody; the stupid factory owner, and the dying worker, Kringelein.
Grand Hotel is written by William Absalom Drake (Strange Justice (1932)), adapting his own same-titled 1930 play, which in turn was based on Vicki Baum's (Die Welt ohne Sünde (1923)) novel Menschen im Hotel (1929). It is directed by Edmund Goulding (Sun-Up (1925)).
Written as an ensemble star vehicle, and a spearhead for this particular discipline in films, Grand Hotel is without a larger, unifying plot. It can seem to be splashing a bit in different directions. There is for instance rather a lot of talk about a merger, which seems highly unimportant for the stories. There is a good amount of drama tied to death, but the perishing accountant character Kringelein is somehow too thinly sketched as a character; has the man no family, friends, and no apparent history?
Grand Hotel still retains a good deal of irrefutable charm as the major production it was. It especially lives on due to the fascinating, vivid portraits drawn by its two big female stars as two very opposite-directed characters: Greta Garbo (Eros (1926)) as the tempestuous diva, and Joan Crawford (Today We Live (1933)) as the romantic 'dove' stenographer.
Watch a trailer for the film here
Cost: 750k $
Box office: 2.5 mil. $
= Box office success (returned 3.33 times its cost)
[Grand Hotel premiered 12 April (New York) and runs 112 minutes. Producer Irving Thalberg had bought the rights to the novel for 13k $, and contracted Drake again after success on the stage for a film version. Shooting took place in MGM's Culver City studio in California. The film won the Best Picture Oscar, the first and only film to date to win the award without getting nominated in any of the other categories. The ledger of producer and 'fixer' Eddie Mannix details that the film made 1.2 mil. $ domestically and 1.3 mil. $ elsewhere for a 2.5 mil. $ gross. It was remade as the successful Week-End at the Waldorf (1945). Goulding returned with Blondie of the Follies (1932). Garbo returned in As You Desire Me (1932); Crawford in Letty Lynton (1932); and John Barrymore (Counsellor at Law (1933)) in State's Attorney (1932). Grand Hotel is certified fresh at 86 % with a 7.58/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
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