Film Excess - Free Ukraine - Stop Putin - End the war NOW!!: Grand Hotel (1932) - Loose star vehicle with some charm and two magnificent dames

1/08/2021

Grand Hotel (1932) - Loose star vehicle with some charm and two magnificent dames

♥♥♥

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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Born in Canada, Sutherland battled polio as a child. His first credit was in Suspense (1963, TV-series) and his first film was The Castle of the Living Dead (1964). Later credits in his remarkable career include The Saint (1965-66), The Dirty Dozen (1967), M*A*S*H (1970), Kelly's Heroes (1970), Klute (1971), Don't Look Now (1973), 1900 (1976), Casanova (1976), The Eagle Has Landed (1976), Ordinary People (1980), A Dry White Season (1989), JFK (1991), Outbreak (1995), Fallen (1998), Virus (1999), Fierce People (2005), Pride & Prejudice (2005), Lord of War (2005), The Hunger Games (2012), The Undoing (2020, miniseries) and many more. He passed away at age 88. R.I.P.

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Born in Detroit, Michigan, Corman had a sprawling, intellectually hungry life as a youth and young man before arriving with his first film in 1955, Five Guns West. He would follow that with titles such as Apache Woman, It Conquered the World, Attack of the Crab Monsters, Teenage Cave Man, A Bucket of Blood, House of Usher, The Little Shop of Horrors, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Intruder, The Raven, The Terror, The Masque of Red Death, The Tomb of Ligeia, The Wild Angels, The Trip, Bloody Mama and many more. As a producer he was behind almost 500 films. Arguably among the most important filmmakers of the 20th century, Corman passed away at age 98. R.I.P.

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Film Excess - Free Ukraine - Stop Putin - End the war NOW!!

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1/08/2021

Grand Hotel (1932) - Loose star vehicle with some charm and two magnificent dames

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