"Grand Hotel" (1932) - A grand disappointment

This is the oldest Oscar winner we’ve watched to date, it won Best Picture at the 5th annual academy awards ceremony, before the nickname ‘Oscar’ was actually introduced to the Academy Awards (that didn’t happen officially until 1939).

Tellingly this is the only Best Picture Winner in 82 years to not have a single other nomination in any other category and we can really see why. I think this was possibly one of the first ‘mega-cast disasters’. Recent films under that category would include; “The Player” (1992), (actually anything by Robert Altman in the 90s) and “Valentine’s Day” (2010) – these are the movies that you pay your money to see and walk out shaking your head, rubbing sleep from your eyes and saying, “But it was such a good cast…”

And in the same grand tradition, “Grand Hotel” did have a stellar cast of who’s who in the 1930s. MGM broke the mould by using 5 of its top-ranked stars in this movie; Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, Joan Crawford, Lionel Barrymore and Wallace Beery. Prior to this film, the conventional wisdom was to only use one or two stars and keep costs down – after this movie, they realised it wasn’t as important to keep the costs down as it was to keep the egos in check!

Garbo wouldn’t speak to or even deign to be in the same room as Crawford. Crawford retaliated by constantly playing Marlene Dietrich songs between takes (Garbo and Dietrich had a long running rivalry). Beery insisted that for him to take the role of the amoral magnate he be the only cast member allowed to speak with a German accent (despite the entire film being set in Berlin and populated entirely with German characters like Felix von Gaigern and Flaemmchen) and reportedly did his best to steal every scene he shared with his famous co-stars.

If you, my dear readers are wondering why I’ve gone on for 4 paragraphs without mentioning the movie it’s because it was a colossal disappointment to us! It was the first Garbo movie for Mat and myself and despite her delivering one of the most famous lines in history, “I want to be alone”, her performance bordered on the ridiculous. Whether it was completely her interpretation of her character or the director getting back at her for insisting on reshoots so she had equal screen time with Crawford, or perhaps that she couldn’t actually act, she was painful to watch.

The majority of the relationships between the characters felt strained and false and even before we did some background reading we knew that this movie was not produced on a happy set. Several of the characters who were supposed to be in love seemed to actively despise each other.

The real disappointment was that it starts off quite promising. There are some witty script moments, with some true 30s snap and sass, “Oh, you're a little stenographess? Fascinating. I don't suppose you'd, uh, take some dictation from me sometime, would you?” [said while he has her up against a pillar]. Some of the establishing shots of the hotel and background characters are really spectacular, but overall it’s just let down by the haphazard dénouement of the story and the forced feel of the characters relationships and predicaments.

I scored it 46/100 and Mat a generous 42/100!