Evan D. As a project this year we are taking a trip through time to revisit all of the Best Picture winners in history, Wings to Wicked??? (hopefully not Wicked.) Grand Hotel is the fifth film in that series, to see all the other Best Picture reviews, click here. After showing a preference for epic scale and intense drama in the first few Best Picture winners, the Academy turned its favor to something of a chamber piece in Grand Hotel. Across the titular luxury hotel in Berlin, we meet a collection of guests whose conflicting motivations entangle them together. Among them include a dying laborer blowing the last of his money Lionel Barrymore,) a lovelorn Baron hiding a dark secret (John Barrymore,) a melancholic ballet dancer (Greta Garbo,) a stenographer who moonlights as an escort (Joan Crawford) and an erratic textile executive (Wallace Beery.) A wonderful golden age ensemble that play well off one another.
Grand Hotel is certainly a departure from the first few Best Picture winners. It leans more into comedy than any of the precious winners. It is a film that is light on its feet, fun and propulsive without being especially deep. Everyone is good in it but there is no single standout performance, although Lionel Barrymore was quite entertaining. Across the board just a great ensemble that becomes more than the sum of its parts. Perhaps that lack of standout elements is why it still holds the distinction of the only film to win the big prize despite no other nominations at all. Not to say that Grand Hotel is poorly made, quite the opposite. The set design and camera work do a lot of the heavy lifting as we float from character to character with the illusion of effortlessness. The openness of the lobby set allows the audience to observe all the passersby and gives the feel of being there alongside the guests. While the plot itself begins to escalate rather quickly by the end of the film, it is impressively structured to draw together each of the characters. Thematically, its a film with class and inequality on its mind but those ideas are not thoroughly synthesized. The monetary strife felt by most of the main characters stands starkly against the glitzy resort in which they reside but the story is less concerned with the tensions between the rich and poor than personal entanglements between the guests. The triangle between Beery’s executive, Crawford’s working class typist and Barrymore’s doomed laborer is the closest Grand Hotel gets to exploring such issues and in turn is the most interesting dynamic in the film. Grand Hotel is by no means the greatest of the Best Picture winners — it lacks some of the urgency or depth of the standout wins — but it is a lot of fun and a worthwhile showcase of a few of the great Golden Era actors. It would also be a fantastic introduction to the world of classic cinema if only for breaking the stereotype that old films were stodgy and boring. We had a wonderful stay at the Grand Hotel. 7/10
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