With the lives of so many people being told at once there a few places that they could all be told at the same time. The people had to be intimate with each other and at the same time not know each other at all. One of the few places that it could be done would be a hotel, but not just any hotel, it had to be a Grand Hotel. Beating out Goldwyn's Arrowsmith, Fox's Bad Girl, MGM's The Champ, Warner Bother's Five Star Final, and Paramount's One Hour with You, Shanghai Express, and The Smiling Lieutenant, MGM's Grand Hotel was the winner of the Best Picture of the 5th Annual Academy Awards in 1932.
This is a fast pace film where brief snippets of people lives interact. You have one man who worked all of his life to save money to find he is sick, and with no family to give his savings too, he decides to travel the world and spend the remainder of his life seeing and knowing the world. He decides that he will stay at the Grade Hotel in Berlin. This is where he finds and befriends a Baron. The Baron who squandered his fortune and is now making a living by secretly playing cards and stealing jewelry to give the appearance that he still has money. He tries to steal a Pearl Necklace of a Ballerina, who's career is starting to fall and is on a verge of a breakdown, and they end up falling in love instead. However, the Baron's pride gets the better of him and instead of letting the Ballerina pay for him to run away with her he wants to take care of his debts himself and tries to seal from the man who is sick. When he gets to know this man and decides not to steal from him he goes after the wallet of the sick man's jerk of an employer. The Employer, who just failed to make a merger deal and is trying to make himself fell better with his stenographer, catches and kills The baron leaving all of the other people who knew I'm him a question of what to do next.
Produced by MGM with it's $700,000 budget, $13,397,791.97 in today's money, it's no wonder that the film had such a star studded cast. The likes of Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, Joan Crawford, and Lionel Barrymore it's very hard not to have a success come out of that film. It's still have a rating on 85% on Rotten Tomatoes today, and it's hold the number 30 spot on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes list for the line said by Greta Garbo "I want to be alone". This film is historic in other ways too. In 2007 The Library of Congress selected this film for preservation for the National Film Registry for it's use of story telling. In Hollywood they use the platform of many difference characters lives overlapping in one place like a cruise ship or and airport. The other historic part of this film is that it is the only film, thus far, that was won best picture and not nominated in any other category for the Academy Awards.
This film was so much more interesting than Cimarron. I was never bored once watching this film. I would have to say that the only problem I had with the film is something that really can't be helped much. That would be Greta Garbo. She is a beautiful lady, with a lovely voice, the problem for me was that she over gestured a lot through the film. The reason I say that this can't really be helped is that Ms. Garbo was originally a silent movie star and the way that they got the point across on film was to be slightly more dramatic with their gestures. Now, please don't get the confused with over acting. I don't believe that Ms. Garbo was over acting at all. If she were I would have been really annoyed not only with her gestures but how she read her lines. They would have felt more like Lena Lamont in Singing in the Rain if I thought she was over acting. She delivered her lines beautifully and she did get the feeling across that needed to be had. I think that her character in this film got away with the slight over gestures because she was playing a ballerina who's career was starting to decline and it's made up for that fact. The one surprise that I had was seeing Joan Crawford at such a young age acting on the screen. She was a silent movie star in her start as well but she came on the scene right before they started putting sound into the films and she transitioned gracefully into they period. It was very weird seeing her playing the "sweet and innocent girl" since she has become one of the best villainesses of the screen it's interesting to have to adjust to her playing this role. She did a magnificent job of it though! As always the Barrymores are always a joy to watch on film. whether it be John and Lionel or our very own modern Barrymore Drew, they are always great to watch! I would have to say that I would love to watch this film again. It seems to be one of those films that you could find more to love about the movie every time you watched it. I say that would have been the right pick for that year!
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