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Edwin Maxwell, Ferdinand Gottschalk, Frank Conroy

This Academy Award winner for Best Picture is a sweeping soap opera about the guests at the Grand Hotel. Several plots intertwine, but mostly it's about Stars! Stars! Stars! Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford...( read more  read more... ), Wallace Beery, and both Barrymore brothers head up the cast. Garbo is luminous as Grusinskaya, the neurotic and famous-but-slipping dancer and, yes, she "vonts to be alone." John Barrymore is a cat burglar with blue blood and a heart of gold, and Lionel Barrymore happily caroms off him as Mr. Kringelein, a dying man who wants to live out the time he has left with the rich. Joan Crawford is perhaps the biggest surprise of the movie: as Flaemmchen, a young career girl trying to decide between secretary and tart, she is uncharacteristically funny, vivacious, and downright bubbly. Along the way we discover that money, fame, and titles don't guarantee happiness, and being a jewel thief doesn't necessarily make you a bad person. The nicest touch is the hint that other, minor plots swirl around the edges of the film, suggesting that we've only seen a small chapter of the hotel's story. Grand Hotel is a great deal of fun and an excellent chance to see some famous faces in their prime. --Ali Davis

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27 critics

Unrated, 112 min.

Directed by: Edmund Goulding

Release Date: January 1, 1932

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DVD Release Date: February 3, 2004

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Flixster Reviews (300)

  • groaningbitch
    June 18, 2009
    groaningbitch
    1932 "grand hotel" shall be one of the most essential popular classic movies of 1930s ever with its starry cast of john barrymore, greta garbo and joan crawford. it's also where garbo utters her legendary "i want to be alone!" along with an admiring barrymore as her consoling esc...( read more)ort. it's probably a landmarked feature which epitomizes the star personas of barrymore, crawford and garbo thru parodical romanticization of their screen images under a multi-scaled story of synchronicity. "it's grand hotel, people come, people go, nothing ever happens" the commentary line shall be the metaphor of life, imbued with a sense of literary lyricisim that might be considered cliched nowaday but a ground-breaking triumph in the early period of sound flicks of 1930s.

    it's not an easy task to put the story into a concrete term thru words due to its simultaneous plot developements, even they're still in a conventional sort of linear stretch. basically it whirls around the six inhibitants of grand hotel in berlin: the snobbish capitalist, a desperate dying factory worker, a cynical doctor whose face has been marked by the wretched war, a prima donna ballerina who loses her artistic drive, a geogeous but petite stenographer who's willing to sell herself for better money, and of course a gentleman-alike hotel thief in a ergent need of big cashes. the thief (john barrymore) flirts with the beautiful stenographer(crawford) in an unexpected encounter, enchanted by her lively vivacious demeanors. but later when he bumps into the room of the prima donna(garbo) to steal her pearly necklace, he's completely spellbound by her enthreal poise like a fairy goddess into flesh, he's hers. so the thief annuls his mission but determined to seek a way to gather the sum to pay the debt and his travelling expenses with this striking ballerina. somehow fate hasn't favored him, he's beaten to death by the conning capitalist who has harbored a grudge against him. so the woman he loves is leaving the hotel in a carriage without him, and the woman he's once enchanted is heartbroken by it, eloping with the dying elder man for paris in oblivion of his death. the capitalist is served by law, and the doctor mournfully signs "people come, people go, nothing ever happens"

    greta garbo is an odd presence to cuckor's "grand hotel" as she shifts her ancient tragic queen persona into this very modern piece of work: she weeps, she frowns, she utters the sorrowful emptiness of life as if everything is a prop of dreams but still she cannot be gratified by the limited caricature of fantasies, longingly grasping something larger than life like most of her screen characters are. what's the thing which could be larger than life? L. O. V. E. that's the archetype of garbo romantic anxiety in her movies with clarence brown like mata hari and anna karenia. when she dives into buttom, miracle happens, her romantic anxiety turns a thief into a gallant knight who suddenly summons the metto to rescue her. audience buys into that becuz it is greta garbo, only things faraway and larger than life fit her. only she could inspires the utmost noble spirit of men. BUT she might histrionically overdo it when she says "i want to be alone!" (is that a joke the scriptor plays on her?)

    previously the entrance of joan crawford forms quite a opposite contrast to garbo in her verbal love scene with john barrymore. crawford the stenographer, the earthy surviver with the angst to live, to prosper in the leanest condition of great depression, even she has to eat one meal a day. she smiles gayly, she sneers playfully to the gentlemanly stranger who seems to take a spontaneous interest in her. she flames like a ball of fire to tantalize men, fun and laughes in dance after dance. her sex appeal is a stock at her disaposal for wealth and self-improvement. wouldn't those qualities also be her trademark in crawford's mgm movies like "chained" and "possessed"...she's the dame who grins even when she has nothing from the man she appreciates but a brief flirtation while garbo oozes sadness even when she has everything and a miraculous love interest. strangely greta garbo has no scene together with joan crawford just like the whispers of fancy cannot meet to perish by the grim reality. either these two women have a cat fight over the same man they covet or one's bitter over another as the sour loser. greta garbo also has no scene with wallace beery, lionel barrymore and lewis stone. garbo's section with john barrymore alone seems to be part dissected from the rest unpleasant part of life as a one small garbo episode within a big movie. john barrymore acts the stance of the audience to travel thru dreams to reality, then backward again. that's the evidence of the director's talent to melt different sub-gendres into one grand watchable movie as it does have some unharmonious compositions.

    yearning over greta gabo is like craving for the shiny stars above the sky, when you have her, the star falls upon your palm to glitter, to fascinate you into an insatiable state of ecstacy. appreciating joan crawford is like smelling the scents of a wild red rose over the bushes with thorns and un-tidy grasses, you gaze it and observe its rapturous blossom on its own, then you're aroused to pluck it to put into your pocket even it takes efforts. these two are different sorts of cinematic romanticism which has graced me over for years even it's doomed by its existentialist oblivion as life moves on, nothing ever happens.
  • mwilliams078
    December 5, 2008
    mwilliams078
    Grand Hotel, from MGM in 1932 is a who's who of Hollywood. Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, and Lionel Barrymore all shine in this classic. All people collide in the setting of the very sheek Grand Hotel...romance and heart ache are in bloom during the few days in this...( read more) swanky hotel. You have to see this film if you are a fan of classics.
  • smith44
    November 8, 2008
    smith44
    1930's Classic. Stellar cast Greata Garbo, "I want to be alone", Stellar Cast: John Barrymore, Joan Crwaford "Mommie Dearest" One of the greatest early Hollywood films with inter woven stories that great a grand narrative.
  • Jules1st
    September 18, 2007
    Jules1st
    Every time I watch a 30?s classic I feel like there was a time when people have captured the true essence of movie making and I really envy the viewers who lived in that time because they had the privilege of such a golden age for cinema. Grand Hotel is a grand spectacle of fabul...( read more)ous acting and glorious writing exploring human emotions and dramas to the deepest to present a timeless classic with timeless stars.

    The movie is about the intersection of many characters all living in the Grand hotel and how they get together in the most inconvenient ways and the effect of those meetings on their personalities and on their lives in general. The movie has your all typical introductive beginning presenting us the characters and slight notice about who they are and what they do and what?s the purpose of their visit to the hotel. But we?re not dealing with typical characters. We have eccentric human characters, each of them representing a different kind of personality showing the variation of people and how their differences brought them together. The movie has one single point which is the need of human bonding and how people must have decent human relations to keep on with their lives. And they show how this need can influence every kind of personality. And here where this variation of characters demonstrated its existence in the writing of the movie.

    After the introduction, the movie starts by showing off the growing relations between the many characters present in it. Most of them were built on love and respect; some of them were based on hate and insolence. All the characters burst out with emotions yet one was the center of attention to bring all those emotions together and it was Greta Garbo?s character. It demonstrated loneliness and sorrow and in a slight twist of events it turned into love and cheerfulness. But this twist of events was a bit confusing. John Barrymore?s character should have been a Baron yet suddenly we find out that he?s not what he recalls to be. Later in the movie, his character shows affection to Garbo?s character but we never saw them together before in the movie which was a bit confusing but still it didn?t make the movie less important.

    The whole movie is all centered inside the hotel and we never go outside of it except for the front sidewalk which was a great idea to keep us captured inside the atmosphere of this Grand Hotel. The ending was the climatic one you will be expecting but it was still a satisfying one and logical due to the events of the movie.

    Now the cast all together stands as one of the greatest ensemble acting ever to be performed in a motion picture. All of them were luminous and all of them gave extravagant performances worthy of their name. But still the female leads were the ones to steal the show. Greta Garbo gives a poetical performance here with her famous line ?I vant to be alone? with a brilliant accent. Although I would have preferred her character to be darker and stronger but it was still good. But my number one performer here and to my big surprise was Joan Crawford. I can?t hide the fact that I dislike her a lot but I also can?t deny the fact that she has given one of the most glamorous performances of her career which enters my list of my favorite female performances.
  • mjgildea
    November 19, 2006
    mjgildea
    I remember liking it when I saw it a while ago.
  • Tecnoandre
    October 27, 2009
    Tecnoandre
    Classic masterpiece.
  • jam233
    October 2, 2009
    jam233
    A dazzling classic, a best picture winner with a once in a lifetime cast. John Barrymore, Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery, Lionel Barrymore, Lewis Stone, Jean Hersholt...amazing! The story is fascinating and sumptuously produced, the art direction is outstanding. Great ...( read more)and fascinating plot, which has since been imitated many times over.
  • SageSlowdive
    August 17, 2009
    SageSlowdive
    Excellent classic film.
  • graveling861
    April 4, 2009
    graveling861
    Overrated but it's nice.
  • polishedsilver
    November 9, 2008
    polishedsilver
    Odd and interesting... on Turner Classic Movies.... Greta was great on course!

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