"Grand Hotel" - Film Review

When I think of the spectacle of Old Hollywood, I think of films like Grand Hotel. Sugary to the point of being saccharine, Grand Hotel is one of those films that stuffs a lot of stories and a lot of stars into one film and hopes that its sheer charm will be enough to cover up for its flaws. And for the most part, it succeeds.

The film is clichéd but there’s a great deal of star power, glitz, and glamour that make the film a good deal of fun even when you can so clearly see the plot strings being manipulated. These characters are types. The penniless baron (John Barrymore); the evil businessman (Wallace Berry); the clever stenographer (Joan Crawford); the mild-mannered assistant (Lionel Barrymore); the disillusioned singer (Greta Garbo). 

Director Edmund Goulding largely balances these stories without it becoming overwhelming; a fact eased by the singular setting of the story set in the titular hotel. The stories begin to intersect in interesting and unexpected ways and eventually the film privileges ones story over the others, that of the Baron, and has the other stories play into this one story. The new found focus allows the film the get away with its excesses. It also helps that this privileged story is a love story. 

The story of the baron becomes about his efforts to pay off a debt so he can be with the singer. By a strange turn of circumstances, he falls in love with her after getting stuck in her room while failing to cat-burglarize some pearls. She’s suicidal and he helps talk her down. She’s quickly won over by him, all the more so after he admits to stealing the pearls. 

The stenographer has a crush on the baron. The assistant is taught to love life and stand up to his boss with the baron’s encouragement. The evil businessman is increasingly slimy and awful, and his despicableness culminates in an act of manslaughter. At which point the last third of the film becomes something far more brooding and dark. You kind of wish it would emphasize this development more, but instead it balances between the old happy-go-lucky tone and the sadder one with mixed results. By film’s end, the story disappointingly chooses to go for a full on happy ending. 

It’s all one of those alluring showcases of Old Hollywood with stars and laughs and tears, and it all plays out mostly predictably. But it’s hard to not to be won over just a little bit by all the spectacle; the charmingness of let’s put on a show! It was meant to be a crowd pleaser back in 1932, and it, for the most part, remains pleasing even if it’s all just a little lightweight and thinly strung together. 

Grade: B-