Week 4. Grand Hotel (1932)

3 ½ STARS - GOOD SHOW!

“It was a little boring through the middle because they went blah-blah-blah-blah-blah.”--Kayla

The Film:  Five strangers check in at the extravagant Grand Hotel in Berlin all for different reasons, but their lives come to intersect and entwine.  A charming ladies man and jewel thief (John Barrymore) falls for Russian ballerina (Greta Garbo), who is depressed over her fading career.  A desperate businessman (Wallace Beery) who is verging on bankruptcy, has hired a young stenographer (Joan Crawford) who must fend off his attentions.  And dying retiree (Walter Beery) has come to the hotel to spend his last days and life savings in luxury. 

In the course of a few hours each will affect the lives of the others.  One of the first movies to feature a big name ensemble cast, it won the Oscar for Best Motion Picture.

The Society:   We are finding that much of the appeal of our Family Film Society is that we make an event out of going to the movies, just like it used to be in the 20s through 50s, when folk would dress up in their finest Sunday-go-to-meetin’ just to see a show.  This time was particularly so, as we all got dressed up and sat down to a formal dinner.  Well, as formal as our split-level, starter-home dining nook would allow. 

The Family Vote:  

Kayla - 3.5 Stars - The girl [Greta Garbo] should have taken the dog.  It was a little boring through the middle because they went blah-blah-blah-blah-blah.

Kenz - 5 Stars - I liked this one, especially when the playboy character was [Spoiler Prevention]--as I predicted.

Syd - 1 Star - I left because I didn’t like it; and I had a friend here.

Stacy - 4 Stars - Cinematography continues to improve.  Not really what I expected it to be about.  Greta Garbo’s performance better than in “Anna Christie.”

Ladd - 4 Stars - Interesting, but not for our younger ones.  A famous, Best Motion Picture film, but definitely an adult-oriented drama.  We’re four weeks into it and still struggling to truly engage the girls’ interest, especially Syd’s.  The best movies of the early thirties seem to lack family-engaging fare.  Here’s hoping to strike cinematic gold next week.

That’s What Dad Says:  “Grand Hotel” has great structure, opening with five quick scenes where the five main characters have hurried, last minute phone conversations, then one by one check into Berlin’s swankiest hotel. 

            The opening purposefully confuses.  The conversations have no context and are hard to follow.   We feel the hubbub, the fragments of overheard conversation that mix in with the regular, established patterns of a busy hotel at check-in time.  The closing is similar.  We sense the daily life of the hotel itself.  We feel it’s rhythm.  As if it breathes, as if it’s alive. 

            The film is framed in that perspective--in the view of the hotel itself.  We see only a snapshot of five lives captured in the short frame between check-in and check-out.  Just like a movie, lives pass before the lens, but briefly.

            Giving voice to the hotel is it’s only permanent resident, Dr. Otternschlag (Lewis Stone), a retired surgeon.  His face bears a gruesome scar earned in World War I.  Speaking directly to the camera, he says, “People come, people go. Nothing ever happens."  The message has double meaning--one ironic, the other true.  Of course, consequential events did happen--people fell in love, were attacked, lost their entire life’s savings, found renewed purpose…and killed or were killed.  That’s the irony. 

            The truth is that these events were of no great consequence to the hotel--to this particular time and place.  Tomorrow will still come, the same as today, and will bring new lives, new characters.  Once again everything will be just the same as the day before.  Or the day before that.  All the memories will vanish, picked up by a string of cabs at the grand entrance, or by the hearse loading at the service dock.  The lives passing through on that particular day take their dramas elsewhere--to places and events that we, as the viewers, and the hotel, in it’s indifferent permanence, will never know.

            And that is this movie’s appeal.  As the much-changed guests move out and on with their lives, we can only imagine and wonder.  Particularly in the case of the Russian ballerina we are left wanting to know--in fact dying to know--what will happen.  We only know that within hours her life will rock with seismic force.  And we only know that we will never know. 

            When I look out at my own particular place, and wonder what these granite mountains of the Wasatch Front will see in this valley a million years from now--I know that is true to life.  --Ladd    

                   

Thanks for Dinner, Mom!

Theme - High society

            We all dressed up nice.  Linen tablecloth and napkins,  nice fancy fare, dishes and wine glasses with a flower centerpiece.  This was a several course meal.

Appetizer:  Artichoke pie (one of my favorite things to eat at a restaurant called “The Dodo”)

Dinner salad & rolls

Salmon (broiled) with couscous and asparagus

Sparkling cider

Dessert:  Strawberries over cubed shortcake, drizzled with chocolate sauce