Grand Hotel

"Grand Hotel... always the same. People come, people go. Nothing ever happens." --Doctor Otternschlag, Grand Hotel

This film prescribes to the belief (still prevalent in films today) that if you pack enough stars into one film it will have to be a hit.  Although this is not always the case, with the amount of talent bursting at the seams of this movie, it is impossible for it to fail.  And it doesn't.  Through sometimes plodding in its pace, Grand Hotel weaves an interlocking collection of stories together in unexpected but ultimately satisfying ways.


The Plot

Joan Crawford as Flaemmchen

Greta Garbo as Grusinskaya

Flaemmchen and Preysing

Welcome to The Grand Hotel in Berlin, Germany, home to Europe's rich and famous, and full to bursting with interesting characters.  There is Baron Felix von Geigern, played by John Barrymore, a devil-may-care womanizer and war veteran, who has turned to gambling to increase his seriously depleted funds.  Grusinskaya, played by Greta Garbo, is a spoiled, perennially depressed prima ballerina who is still suffering from her defection from Russia.  Wallace Beery plays an industrial tycoon, General Director Preysing, who married his way into his job but is now trying to push a merger through just to stay afloat.  His newly hired stenographer, Flaemmchen, played by Joan Crawford, pines for the Baron while fending off the advances of Preysing.  Otto Kringelein, played by Lionel Barrymore, is a man who has just discovered he has a terminal disease, and has decided to quit his job as a bookkeeper in one of Preysing's factories and live the remainder of his life in the most extravagant way possible.  Lastly is Dr. Otternschlag, played by Lewis Stone, a disfigured war veteran who hangs around the Hotel, commenting on them all.  Hanging around the fringes are Grusinskaya's many attendants, the head porter whose wife is in labor, Preysing's laywer, and the other hotel guests.

Flaemmchen and the Baron

Preysing is worried.  If his merger doesn't go through, his company is sunk.  But the merger will only come through if "The Manchester Company" agrees to do business with him.  His lawyer hires Flaemmchen, a beautiful stenographer with aspirations to act, to assist him before the meeting.  Kringelein throws a fit because he wants a much better room than he has, and is finally accommodated.  The Baron befriends the hapless Kringelein, and the two of them meet Flaemmchen as she waits outside Preysing's room.  The Baron makes a date with Flaemmchen for the next night at 5pm, while waiting to see if he can catch a glimpse of Grusinskaya, to whom he has been sending frequent gifts.  Grusinskaya has been performing badly, and is suffering from bouts of melancholy that make her unable to sleep or dance, which in turn causes her staff to tear their hair out in frustration.  Returning from an incomplete dancing engagement, she turns everyone out of her room, uttering her famous line, "I want to be alone."  What she doesn't realize is that the Baron, up to his ears in gambling debts, has been coerced into stealing her priceless pearl necklace and is now trapped inside her room.  He reveals himself to her, while confessing that he has also fallen in love with her.  She tries again to send him away by repeating her famous line, but he stays and she finds herself falling for him as well.

Grusinskaya and the Baron

Grusinskaya and the Baron

Preysing stops Flaemmchen and Kringelein

Preysing and Flaemmchen

Preysing meanwhile has received a note that the Manchester deal is not going through.  At his meeting he tries to evade a straight answer, but finally is forced to lie and say he does have the Manchester deal to guarantee his merger.  Grusinskaya and the Baron spend the night together, and the next morning she invites him to travel with her.  The Baron refuses to take her money, but tells her he will find a way to make the money and get on the train with her the next morning.  Grusinskaya is happy once again, and her staff is relieved.  The Baron, however, is depressed.  He keeps his date with Flaemmchen, but tells her he loves another.  She is disappointed, but agrees to dance with the lovable Kringelein.  Preysing, witnessing this, becomes angry and tries to separate them.  Kringelein and Preysing exchange words, but after Flaemmchen finally dances with Kringelein she goes with Preysing up to his room.  She agrees to go with him to Manchester, and to stay with him in his suite at the hotel, though she is clearly repulsed by him.

Flaemmchen witnesses the Baron's death

Kringelein gambling with the Baron and Dr. Otternschlag

Flaemmchen and Kringelein

Increasingly desperate, the Baron tries a number of ways to pay off his debts.  He gets Kringelein to help run a gambling ring from his room, but he goes bust while a drunken Kringelein doubles his money.  Distraught, he tries to steal money from Preysing's room, only to get caught by Preysing himself as Flaemmchen is undressing in the next room.  They struggle, and Preysing hits the Baron over the head, inadvertently killing him.  Preysing tries to get a horrified Flaemmchen to cover for him, but she runs crying to Kringelein, who reports him.  Preysing is carried out in handcuffs and Kringelein and Flaemmchen run off to Paris together.  Fearing another bout of depression, Grusinskaya's staff hide the Baron's death from her, insisting that he will join her on the road.  As she leaves, finally happy, Dr. Otternschlag affirms his opening line, that nothing really happens at the Grand Hotel, although so much has.

The History
Irving Thalberg, "Boy Wonder" and creative mind behind MGM, purchased the rights to Menschen im Hotel by Vicki Baum and first produced a successful Broadway play before turning it into a film.  Before Grand Hotel, it was considered too costly to have more than one or two big stars per picture.  But Thalberg decided to launch the first "all star" film and choose five top MGM stars to play the major roles.  While both Barrymores agreed, Garbo, Beery, and Crawford all had their doubts.  Greta Garbo thought 27 was too old to play a ballerina, and only agreed after she was given control over who played her love interest in the film.  Beery thought the role would be too unsympathetic and damaging for his image, finally agreeing after Thalberg told him he would be the only one with a German accent.  Lastly, Crawford had to be persuaded into the role, as she thought that most of her scenes would be censored and she would lose screen time.  She wasn't completely wrong; theaters in more conservative states cut her racier scenes.

Flaemmchen and Preysing

When Thalberg eventually got everyone on set, things went a little more smoothly.  The famously reclusive Garbo surprisingly got along well with John Barrymore, even allowing the publicity department to take rare behind-the-scenes photos.  She requested that the love scenes in rehearsal be lit with red lighting so as to be more romantic.  Garbo and Crawford never appeared in the same scene together, so that one wouldn't upstage the other.  The director, Edmund Goulding, did decide to add more Garbo scenes after previewing the film, concerned that Crawford was stealing the show.  All the hard work and risk paid off; after a star-studded opening night, Grand Hotel would turn out to be one of biggest grossing MGM films of all time.  Grand Hotel has the dubious honor of being the only film to win "Best Picture" but not be nominated for any other category.  Incidentally, to prevent last year's disaster, the Academy made a rule that prohibited speech-making at the Awards.  This would also be the year that Walt Disney would win an "Special Award" for creating Mickey Mouse, and winners' names would be broadcast on a screen behind them with a small clip of their film.

Barrymore and Garbo backstage

Grand Hotel is still famous today.  Garbo's line, "I want to be alone," is ranked as #30 on AFI's List 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes.  It is also the line that managed to sum up Garbo's attitude toward her fame for the rest of her life.  It was the first all-star drama in Hollywood and also the first film that followed characters in one large setting, their lives either overlapping or completely separate.  This is what is now known as a "Grand Hotel theme" and has since been used in movies that have since been set at airports, aboard ocean liners, in large department stores and so forth.  While it has been criticized as being overly dramatic and "largeish," Grand Hotel is usually remembered for its glamorous theatricality and star power.

Filming of Grand Hotel

The Verdict?
The best description I can come up with for this film is "luxurious."  The women vamp their way through the film with low, throaty voices, dressed in silk stockings and robes.  The men wear expensive suits and plow their way through the film with heavy, important dialogue.  It is a melodrama, and it is as though the director is attempting to pack as much action as he can into each scene while still muffling the whole thing with expensive decor.

I don't suppose I'm making much sense.  Put it this way: this movie has rich people fighting, falling in love, falling in lust, dying, and gambling.  We as the audience are both very aware of the humanity of the main characters while simultaneously marveling at how fabulous they all are.  It's fun!  It's like watching an old Hollywood soap opera with better acting but less overt sex.  The thing about movies like this, however, is that they cause the audience to focus on who the actors are rather than the parts they are playing.  The entire movie, I didn't think that Grusinskaya was doing something, but rather that Greta Garbo was.  Some parts were a little slow, and it was difficult to focus because the plot really didn't matter.  New characters kept popping up all the time, each with a new story or problem.

The best part was discovering these old Hollywood actors.  Isn't Greta Garbo gorgeous, in a surreal, otherworldly kind of way?  And looking through these pictures, don't you desperately wish you had Joan Crawford's legs?  And watching both Barrymores allowed me to compare them to the current famous Barrymore, John's granddaughter Drew.  The stars make the film, without them this film would be just another 1930s melodrama.  It is worth watching just for the thrill of seeing incredible actors waltz around a plush hotel, draping themselves over divans and uttering "I want to be alone."  Hell, it's worth it just to hear that one line.

German Food? Well, kind of...

If I went with the food they made in the movie, I would have made crusts of bread and raw meat.  I decided, however, to go with something a little more universally popular.  My original decision was to make German Pancakes.  I got the recipe from SmittenKitchen.com, another of my favorite food blogs (thank you, SFR). I don't actually know how German they are, in several posts people also referred to them as "Dutch babies."  However, they looked yummy and they had the word German in them so I was sold.  My friend, JC, was game enough to try them with me, although she was certainly skeptical at first.  I don't know if she was so interested in German food as much as she was just too lazy to cook herself.


Not-So-German Pancakes
You'll Need:
4 eggs
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup flour, sifted
2/3 cup milk
2 tablespoons soft butter
A handful of raspberries
Some maple syrup
A sprinkling of powdered sugar

1. Heat oven to 400°F. Butter two 9-inch cake pans well. I didn't have two cake pans, so I used two similarly shaped bowls.  It went ok, but in future if you want them thinner, go for the cake pans.
2. Put eggs in mixer, wisk until light yellow in color. (It's okay if you don't have a mixer)
3. Add remaining ingredients; wisk until smooth. 
4. Pour into prepared pans and bake 20 minutes; then reduce heat to 350°F and bake 10 minutes. 
5. Let cool and service on plates or in the bowl.

This recipe yields 2 medium sized pancakes.  You can serve this as the original recipe recommends, with lemon slices, powdered sugar and butter.  Other options include raspberry syrup (which sounds awesome) or maple syrup, powdered sugar and fresh raspberries, if you’re us. We sprinkled a heavy dose of the powdered sugar on top and then added a little syrup and raspberries.  They're best hot out of the oven, but I left some for my roommate and she thought they were great after re-heated in the microwave. Mmmmm....

JC wasn't convinced that these weird pancake things would be enough for dinner, and after working all day she and I were really hungry.  So I picked up some Hofbrau German sausages from Trader Joe's, along with red and orange peppers and a small onion.  "Do you like sausages?"  I asked as she looked at me with raised eyebrows, "They're German too!"  Thankfully I have nice friends who go along with me even when I'm a little crazy.  We therefore created...

German Sausages with Relish
You'll need:
A package of German sausages (mine had 5 sausages in it, which is more than enough)
2 peppers (red or orange)
1 small white onion
2 tbsps honey
2 ½ tbsps Dijon mustard
1-2 tbsps extra virgin olive oil
Some bread or rolls

1. Heat oil in a large pan over the stove.  Add sausages and cook until they are brown all over, turning frequently to avoid burning.  They should be around 170 degrees, if you have a meat thermometer.  Take them off the heat when done and cover to keep warm.
2. Finely chop onion and place in ziplock bag.  Add the honey and the mustard and shake the bag until all is mixed together.  You can vary the amount of mustard or honey according to taste.
3. Dice peppers and add them to the pan you just took the sausages out of.  Let them cook for about 5 minutes in the sausage grease (yum).
4. Add the onions and cook until the onions are slightly translucent, stirring often to combine the flavors. 
5. Remove from heat. Place the sausages in rolls or on bread, and cover with the pepper/onion relish.

Voila!  German sausages with relish! Kind of.  Well it's my take on a German recipe anyway so I guess it will have to work.  And it must have been pretty good because JC stopped being skeptical and helped me devour everything.

Next time...Cimarron.  Ugh.  Soooo not excited.

All Quiet on the Western Front

"...Now they're sending babies, and they won't last a week! I shouldn't have come on leave. Up at the front you're alive or you're dead and that's all. You can't fool anybody about that very long. And up there we know we're lost and done for whether we're dead or alive. Three years we've had of it, four years! And every day a year, and every night a century! And our bodies are earth, and our thoughts are clay, and we sleep and eat with death! And we're done for because you can't live that way and keep anything inside you! I shouldn't have come on leave. I'll go back tomorrow." --Paul Bäumer to his old professor (All Quiet on the Western Front)

Dark, depressing, and utterly morbid, this film is as far from The Broadway Melody as I could get.  I don’t really like war movies, and the film quality wasn't great, but I ended up actually enjoying the film.  As much as I can enjoy a film about the hopelessness of war and the death of everyone involved.  As an anti-war film, it serves as a poignant reminder of the casualties of war that is still extremely relevant today.

The Plot
The plot in this movie is less linear, and more a series of vignettes in the story of the life of a man named Paul Bäumer, played by Lew Ayres.  In 1914, parades line the streets of Germany, and a classroom of eager young men listen to their idealistic professor wax lyrical on the glories of dying for their country.  The young men rise as a class and enlist, along with the other men of their town, including their friend, the postman.

The young men head to training camp, only to find their friend, the postman, is now their pompous, tyrannical training officer named Corporal Himmelstoss.  The boys are put through their paces, until they are finally deployed to the Western Front Line, although not before they finally revenge themselves on the evil postman.  They are shipped out the Front, only to find there is no food, no rules, and men dying all around them.   They meet Corporal Katczinsky, or Kat, played by Louis Wolheim,and the other few veterans in the 2nd Company, who proceed to show these untried recruits the ropes of survival.  One of their class died after being horrifically blinded, and all the new recruits are upset.

The next we see the remaining recruits, they are huddled in an underground bunker, with no food, bombs exploding all around them, and only rats for company.  Paul is managing after a week of little sleep or food, but many of his friends are having psychotic breaks.  Kat must start punching them and knocking them out to save them from running out into the gunfire.  One recruit, Kemmerich, breaks free and runs out, only to be shot down and wounded.  Suddenly, there is a break in the bombing and the men rush out to fight.  Men run forward to be killed on both sides, and all the audience sees are men running into machine guns.  Many enemy men are killed, but the Germans are unable to hold the French front, and must retreat.

They return to camp, only to see the cook refusing to feed them because he has cooked the wrong rations; he's made food for 150 men, but only 80 have returned.  Eventually fed and full, the members of the 2nd Company stretch out under the trees, debating the cause of the war.  Paul and another recruit, Mueller, try to give the philosophical reasons, but these are met with the very practical reasoning of the lower class veterans.

The recruits decide to visit Kemmerich at the dressing ward.  He has just finished surgery, and does not yet realize, until he friends tell him, that he has lost his leg.  Mueller thoughtlessly asks Kemmerich if he can have his boots, as it is clear Kemmerich will not be using them.  Paul stays with Kemmerich, and as he lays dying, he tells Paul that Mueller can have his boots, and Paul his watch.  Paul leaves the ward at a run, Kemmerich’s death leaving him strangely energized and hungry.  Mueller is excited about the boots, claiming that he “won’t mind returning to the front with such fine boots.”

In later scenes, Mueller is killed, and his boots are passed along amongst the group of steadily dwindling soldiers.  Paul remains alive, and grows as cynical as the veterans.  Corporal Himmelstoss comes to Front, only to be laughed at for his pomposity and then spurned for his cowardice.  Paul kills a French soldier, but then tries to save him, crying bitterly when he fails.  When he finally leaves the ditch he had been hiding in, he is comforted by his friends and joins in a round of drinking.  While bathing in a pond, Paul and his friend see French women, and seduce them with food.  Paul tells the woman that he will never forgot her, even if he would never recognize her.

Paul is finally wounded and taken to a hospital with his friend Albert.  While Paul pulls through, Albert has his leg amputated, and is destroyed by pain and sorrow.  Paul gets a furlough and goes home only to find lunacy reigns.  His father discusses impossible war policies with the other old men, and his old teacher is still recruiting young boys with his idealistic garbage.  Paul tries to explain that dying for one’s country is painful and dirty but no one listens or understands.  Only his mother brings him peace, though she lays dying in her bed.  But even she continues to see Paul as the child he no longer is.  Paul leaves a few days early, disgusted and out of place.

Paul returns to the camp, where all of those he joined with are no longer.  One of the veterans, Tjaden, is teaching new recruits the ropes, only these boys are 16 and 15, younger than the 19 he had been.  Paul goes in search of Kat, who is foraging for food, and he tells Kat of his disillusionment with home.  Just as he is calling Kat his one true friend, a bomb goes off and Kat is hit in the shin.  Paul boosts Kat on his shoulders and begins carrying him back, telling him of all the time they will spend together after the war, not realizing that Kat has taken stray shrapnel to the head.  When he gets to the camp, the doctors tells him why he shouldn’t have bothered, and go back to playing cards.  Paul goes back to the front, and while crouched with a gun in a trench, he sees a butterfly.  As he reaches out to catch the butterfly (he used to collect them at home), he puts himself in harm’s way, and gets picked off by an enemy sniper.

The History
All Quiet on the Western Front was first a novel written by German author Eric Maria Remarque.  Remarque, a German veteran of World War I, wrote the novel in 1927 and was published in January, 1929.  Carl Laemmle, the head of Universal studios, was annoyed that his studio had yet to even win a nomination. 

He poured $1.2 million dollars into making the hit novel into a film (a very large sum for those days) and released the movie in April, 1930. Director Lewis Milestone consulted with real German war veterans who had immigrated to the United States in order to make sure the war scenes were authentic and ended up using them as extras in the movie.  His quest for authenticity led him to leave out music from the movie completely but caused the chief sanity inspector of Orange County, California, to halt production for the day while he checked the conditions of the trenches.  The movie was nominated for “Best Picture,” “Best Director,” “Best Writing,” and “Best Cinematography” and won the first two.  

While a success at the box office, this movie caused controversy in many ways.  On the one hand, the American Legion threatened to picket  because of its sympathetic treatment of Germans, on the other, Nazis released rats into the theaters showing the movie in Germany, because of its negative treatment of  German war.  The film would later be banned in Germany and Italy for its stance against war, and banned in Poland for its pro-German plot.  The film had such a profound impact on Lew Ayres, the young star of the film, that he asked to be placed in the Medical Corps when he was drafted during World War II.  His request was denied, so he sought and obtained "conscientious objector" status.  People began boycotting his films in protest, but Ayres's request was finally granted and he served quietly in the Medical Corps for the remainder of the war.


This movie was #7 on AFI's List of Top 10 Epics and #54 on their 1998 list of Top 100 movies.  It was remade for TV in 1979 and there are rumors that there are plans to remake it again for the big screen in the next few years.  It is remembered as a true epic war film, one that is sited by many actors and directors as a major influence for the big war movies of today.

The Verdict?
I thankfully know nothing of war and death the way this movie describes it.  It is hard to say what is right and what is wrong.  I told my father that I support draft dodgers.  If you don't want to fight, you shouldn't.  "But what if everyone said that," he replied, "what if no one wanted to fight?  Who would defend our country?"  I replied that it is not defending one's country to get embroiled in a war overseas that will never affect us--but then I stopped myself.  We as a country entered wars because we did see threats against our safety.  Against Al Qaeda, against Communism.  Arguments can be made for both sides.  Who is to say what affects us and what doesn't?  I know that I am not clever enough to decide the fate of millions and that I can only have confidence in those I have chosen to make those decisions for me.  I wish I had more confidence than I do.  And as a woman, if there is a draft, will I ever have to worry as Paul does?  Probably not.  I would worry in different ways, as the French women in this movie do who have no food, no men, and no land.

My father, a man who loves books and movies about war, disliked this movie when he watched it with me.  He thought it was dark, long, and depressing.  "It's a war movie," I replied heatedly, "it's supposed to be depressing!"  But it is not depressing the way Wings is depressing, or even more recent movies like Braveheart or Pearl Harbor.  It is depressing because it shows the futility of war, the purposeless of it.  All Quiet on the Western Front shows good men and bad men dying for no reason, killing men who aren't evil and just waiting for others to end the war.  It is depressing because it provides unanswered questions that linger long after the movie is finished.  Who am I fighting?  Why am I fighting?  Where does the onrush of death end?  Who, really, has any answers?  
 

 
This movie causes one to question violence by attaching the audience to characters that are killed with little warning or reason.  It is the pointlessness of it all that causes the melancholy after the film finishes.  Yes, it is dark and depressing, but its message is so important, even today.  Good literature, films and other media cause good people to ask questions even after they are through.  And that's what this movie does, and why it's my favorite film to date.  Who would have thought that?