Grand Hotel (1932)
TOMATOMETER
AUDIENCE SCORE
Critic Consensus: Perhaps less a true film than a series of star-studded vignettes, Grand Hotel still remains an entertaining look back at a bygone Hollywood era.
Grand Hotel Photos
Movie Info
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Cast
as Grusinskaya
as Baron von Gaigern
as Flaemmchen
as Preysing
as Dr. Otternschlag
as Senf
as Meierheim
as Zinnowitz
as Pimenov
as Otto Kringelein
as Suzette
as Chauffeur
as Gerstenkorn
as Schweimann
as Dr. Waitz
as Honeymooner
as Hotel Manager
as Bartender
as Clerk
as Clerk
as Extra in Lobby
as Rohna
as Nurse
Critic Reviews for Grand Hotel
All Critics (36) | Top Critics (8) | Fresh (31) | Rotten (5) | DVD (8)
Most of the players give impossibly bad performances-they chew up the camera. But if you want to see what screen glamour used to be, and what, originally, "stars" were, this is perhaps the best example of all time.
Each and every performer in the screened "Grand Hotel" does a remarkable piece of work. To us, Garbo is the supreme of magnificence.
As it is, the hotel is well filled.
A commercial picture of high box office potential, first by assembling the most impressive aggregation so far of strictly Bradstreet screen names, and then by filming the play practically unaltered in form.
Less effective as a movie than as a dazzling parade of star iconography.
The Nashville of its day, Grand Hotel's reputation has outgrown its actual quality
Audience Reviews for Grand Hotel
There's drama afoot in the exclusive halls of the Grand Hotel as the rich and famous cavort to their wont and pleasure. Filmed pre-code, some of yhe drama boldly crosses over into salacious territory: witness as Joan Crawford fields the age old query as to whether she like to "take dictation", and see Greta Garbo dance around in an all but sheer nightgown, heavens! There's very little subtlety here, old style written as if 3rd grade grammar school printing, but, per Thalberg undoubtedly, still a quality presentation. A must for history buffs.
Super Reviewer
The kind of wholesome production made in those days but with a fabulous constellation of stars to make it an unforgettable Hollywood classic - especially Joan Crawford and Lionel Barrymore, who are so great that they even manage to outshine the rest of the cast.
Super Reviewer
Various guests, including an aging dancer, a dying accountant, a business magnate, a beautiful stenographer, and a thief, stay at a posh German hotel. It takes a long time - perhaps twenty minutes - for this film to get started, and during that exposition I thought that director Edmund Goulding would attempt to pass off the hotel as the main character. However, once the film realizes that John Barrymore and Greta Garbo are in it, it picks up steam on the strength of the performances by these two exceptional talents. The rest of the characters and the setting find their place, and the film gives off an amiable charm. Later it turns sad, but not oppressively so. Like Nashville and other Robert Altman oeuvre, the film portrays little dramas that might amount only to a recognition of the variance of life and the mercurial nature of fate, but the later director (Altman) developed these themes more clearly and effectively. Overall, once the film is on its way, it can be charming, but it's too long a wait.
Super Reviewer
Grand Hotel Quotes
| Otto Kringelein: | You don't kill someone over a pocketbook! |
| Flaemmchen: | I'd like to be in the movies. |
| Grusinskaya: | I want to be alone. |
| Dr. Otternschlag: | Grand Hotel. People coming, going. Nothing ever happens. (at the start of film) Grand Hotel. Always the same. People come, people go. Nothing ever happens. (end of film) |
| Dr. Otternschlag: | Grand Hotel. Always the same. People come, people go. Nothing ever happens. [end of film] |