GRAND HOTEL 1932

GRAND HOTEL  1932

Each of the first five Oscar winning Best Productions began as yawners. Sunrise, Broadway Melody, All Quiet on the Western Front, Cimarron and Grand Hotel appeared simplistic; the actors lacked today’s naturalness.

However, it’s a mistake to dismiss these films. Each is more complex and character rich than, say, the Last Samurai, whose point is that Tom Cruise can train in martial arts for a few months and then kill a thousand Japanese in 154 minutes.

Grand Hotel’s nothing-is-as-it-seems plot is as sophisticated as Hitchcock. Its setting is Berlin’s plush, modern hotel where, in the words of Dr. Otternschlag, "People come, people go. Nothing ever happens."

The first scene sets the cast: Baron von Geigern (John Barrymore), a down-on-his-luck aristocrat who is so broke, he’s compelled by a mobster posing as a chauffer to steal a Russian dancer’s pearls to repay a 5,000 mark debt.

There’s Kringelein (Lionel Barrymore), a terminally ill bookkeeper who wants to spend his savings in the months he has to live. And coincidentally, there’s his boss, factory owner Preysing (Wallace Beery), who must arrange a merger between his troubled company and an English firm.

A pervasive theme is that there are courageous and unsavory qualities in each man and woman. Preysing, a dedicated family man and a captain of German industry, preys on others and connives to cheat on his wife with stenographer Flaemmchen (Joan Crawford, a major hottie in 1932).

With eyes wide open, Flaem submits to Preysing’s overture:

“I’d like to take a secretary to England. Do you understand me?”

Flaem: “I understand you perfectly.”

Preysing: “How much would you need?”

Flaem: “I would need some clothes, shoes. You’d want me to look nice, wouldn’t you?”

Preysing: “Oh, of course.”

Flaem (sardonically): “Yes. I thought you would. A thousand marks.”

And he gets her an adjoining room at the Grand. It’s an astonishing sellout, but we’ve all seen it happen, haven’t we?

Flaem tells the baron what’s happened, but he doesn’t judge her, because he’s a classy gentleman. Both Flaem and dancer Grusinskaya (Greta Garbo) fall for the baron, a lady’s man who’s also a cat burglar with a conscience: he gives back her pearls and Kringelein’ wallet with $14,000.

Grusinskaya couldn’t be much closer to real-life Garbo: flawless performer, lonely, rich, eccentric, successful, but mortified by performance fright. One line encapsulates both her character and the actress: “I just want to be left alone.”

A few minutes later, there’s a classic scene: Garbo sneaks away from the theater before performing. The baron slips into her hotel room. Then her secretary walks in, looking for Grusinskaya. The baron, trapped, hides in the closet. Grusinskaya arrives and changes in the bathroom. The secretary leaves. The baron races across the room and gets to the exterior curtains before the dancer reenters.

In a soliloquy, she laments her life and wishes for death. The baron could leave, but he comes out of hiding to convinces her to live. They talk all night, and they’re revealed as soul mates.

Which exposes all of us, doesn’t it? Without careers, without spouses, without children, what reason is there to live?

That’s why cringing Kringelein can display the fearlessness of the old: “Who do you think you are? You can’t do anything to me anymore. I’m going to die.”

And that’s how the doctor-philosopher, in the final scene, depicts the hotel as a metaphor for life: “What do you do in the Grand Hotel? Eat, sleep, loaf, flirt a little. A hundred doors leading to one hall. No one knows anything about the person next to them. When you leave, someone occupies your room, lies in your bed.”

Kringelein, who is dying, pays no notice to the doctor’s words, and in the background, a woman laughs outrageously.

Trivia

John and Lionel are the brothers of Ethel Barrymore. John is the father of John Drew Barrymore, and the grandfather of Drew Barrymore.

Two classics missed the Best Picture Oscar: The Champ, also starring Wallace Beery (who tied for an Oscar), and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Fredric March, the other half of the tie).