Vintage Pop

One of my goals is to see every Academy Award nominee for Best Picture. I mean all of them. From day one. For now, though, I’m content with just catching up on the winners. To that end, I recently watched Grand Hotel for the first time.

Grand Hotel, from 1932, won the fifth Academy Award for Best Picture. This Irving Thalberg production was based on on a play by Vicki Baum.

The film is filled with early Hollywood stars, including:

• Greta Garbo as washed-up ballerina Grusinskaya. I’ve never seen Garbo in anything else — she stopped making films in 1941. Her style is very much of the silent era. She over-emotes to a fault. Her hamminess is almost laughable by modern standards.
• Joan Crawford, who has a very natural, affecting style here. “She was a slut,” my wife told me as we watched the film. My wife is a Bette Davis loyalist, though. Davis and Crawford loathed each other.
• Wallace Beery, another new actor for me, despite the fact that he appeared in 230 films. Most of these (nearly 200) were silent, though, and not readily available to modern viewers. Ironically, he didn’t win Best Actor for this film (he wasn’t nominated), but he won for The Champ, another film this same year. (The Champ was also nominated for Best Picture.)
• Lionel Barrymore does a fine job as Otto Kringelein, a man with no time to live, but who seems to be a magnet for money. “Do you recognize him?” Kris asked as we watched. “No. Should I?” I asked. “It’s Mr. Potter,” she said. “No way!” I said, but it’s true. This elevated L.B.’s performance in my eyes. I’d love to see more of his work.
• John Barrymore, Lionel’s brother, does a good job as a ne’er-do-well.

Grand Hotel is a place, in the words of one character, where “nothing ever happens”. Except that in the case of the film, there’s a lot going on. A Russian ballerina, Grusinskaya, is beginning to fall from public favor, and the mental stress is getting to her (and her entourage). A suave baron is actually a small-time crook. A factory-owner is trying to land a big deal at the same time he woos a new stenographer. And a dying man, once employed by the factory-owner, is living his last few days in luxury. The characters collide with one another in all the usual ways.

As I mentioned, I was not impressed with Garbo. She’s like a parody of the silent-screen star here, vamping for the camera. I did like Crawford, though, who had a natural style and a vivacious personality. I found the film, as a whole, entertaining, but rather pedestrian. I did love the gorgeous art deco architecture. The sets are worth the price of admission!

My wife, a Warner Brothers fan, didn’t like this film, which is an MGM production. In the era of studio films, each house had its own style and reputation. I’m not clear on exactly what these reputations were, but I hope to learn as time goes on.

When I began to write this review, there was a seven-minute clip of the film at YouTube. That’s gone now. But this trailer for Grand Hotel is still around: