Movie Classics

Grand Hotel (1932)
Runtime: 112 min
Director: Edmund Goulding
Actors: Greta Garbo, John Barrymore,
John Crawford, Wallace Beery, Lionel Barrymore

Many different people come and go at the Grand Hotel, a luxurious hotel in Berlin. You got the WW1 veteran Doctor Otternschlag (Lewis Stone) who once came but never left the hotel, Otto Kringelein (Lionel Barrymroe) who is dying and wants to spend his last days at the hotel, Baron Felix von Geigern (John Barrymore) who supports himself by playing cards and stealing, Grusinskaya (Greta Garbo) who is a Russian ballerina, and General Director Preysing (Wallace Beery) with his stenographer Flaemmchen (Joan Crawford). They all come together at the Grand Hotel where all their lifes collide.

The movie is full of intrigues, humour and romance, and since the movie is full of all these diverse and interesting characters, it never gets boring. All the actors and actresses shines in their own ways, and brings the characters depth and individuality. John Barrymore is charming and clever as the Baron who steals jewelry for money, but who ends up stealing Garbos heart insted, as the depressed and eccentric Grusinskaya. Beery portayes Preysing perfectly as a controling and shelfish man, who tries to keep his stenographer to himself, the senographer who is in some ways as equally shelfish as him, but also sad and clever. She falls in love with the Baron, but the lifes of the characters of Grand Hotel never goes the way it seems...

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