5. Grand Hotel (1931/1932)

Plot Intro

Five very different people collide together during their stay at the famous Grand Hotel in Berlin. Grusinskaya (Greta Garbo) is a disenchanted dancer, worried about her audience numbers, but finds new life when she falls in love with an aristocratic Baron (John Barrymore) who is secretly bankrupt and resorting to thievery in the hotel. A millionaire businessman, Preysing (Wallace Beery) employs and lusts after a young stenographer (Joan Crawford), while one of his employees (Lionel Barrymore), who has been diagnosed with a terminal illness, is spending his life savings on the holiday of a lifetime. 

Doug says...

Finally! The first film in our series without shuddering jump-cuts, odd cutaways or inexplicable plot points! It’s taken until 1932, but the film-makers have got their game-face on and are at last presenting us with a decently edited, carefully plotted film! 

So there are downsides: it’s the first time I’ve ever seen Joan Crawford in action and I have to say I prefer her when she’s played by Faye Dunaway. But in general, this is a huge step up in terms of performance and film-editing. I was going to put Greta Garbo in my list of ‘not so great things’ because boy does that woman overact, but I couldn’t do it. There is something so magnetic about her presence that all of the wild flailing in flared linen sleeves can’t undo her star power. 

The plot is simple and very classic ‘Stately Home Drama’ - people come and go, and so do their dramas. But we’re not made to feel that the individual dramas of the people are the focus here - in fact something much larger is. There’s no mistake to this hotel being based in 1932 Berlin. In 1932, a certain German politician was rapidly rising to power - to take the role of Chancellor in 1933. His name, of course, was Adolf Hitler. And while there was a lot of support for him, there was a wariness too. There’s no question as to why the true villain of this film is the only overtly German one (the adulterous, condescending Herr Preysing). Yup, it’s the German-hating period of the Oscars! 

This film would be a light piece of frippery were it not for several specific elements. The first is the lack of catharsis - when Garbo’s dancer character ends the film not knowing about a crucial plot-point we are left, pitying her but also dreading her future discovery of the fact. We see Joan Crawford’s character openly submit to what appears to be near-prostitution. We see (for the first time) the working class people’s drama: one hotel porter is worried about his wife’s being in labour. And the most important thing of the whole shebang is Mr Kringelein, beautifully played by Lionel Barrymore. 

A seeming ‘comic character’ (side-note: the amount of unfunny comic characters - usually with a stutter - so far in our list of films is sadly suggestive of Hollywood’s lack of imagination) - Mr Kringelein is a terminally ill clerk who’s come to blow his hard-earned savings at the Grand Hotel. He starts off insignificant but through a series of speeches and scenes, he becomes the beating heart of the film - standing up for justice, and the overruling of class’ privilege. It is through him that we view this expensive frippery-filled world, and through the people he likes and dislikes that we too warm to or distrust characters. 

What begins as a light comedy of manners becomes something far richer, with Mr Kringelein’s view of this glittering but sometimes false world becoming a portent of Germany’s ominous future ahead.

Highlight 

Kringelein’s drunken yet powerful speech: ‘Life, gentlemen, is wonderful but very dangerous. You must have courage for it, then it’s wonderful.’ 

Lowlight

Joan Crawford’s acting skills. I expected more, Joan. Bring me the axe…

Mark 

7.5/10

Paul says...

It is interesting that while our first Oscar winner, Wings, had a clearly-defined, linear plot, all of our subsequent winners so far have presented a more episodic, anthological plot structure. They have had starring actors, but accompanied by large ensemble casts, and numerous interwoven stories and sequences all based around one particular theme or setting, whether it be the backstage antics of Broadway shows, the First World War, or the development of Oklahoma City. 

Grand Hotel continues this trend, but set within the opulent surroundings of a luxury hotel in Berlin. The central themes seem to be fame and fortune- what these concepts truly mean, and what they are worth. Whether a fallen aristocrat is thieving from hotel rooms to make his way in life, an ageing dancer is worrying about her dwindling audiences, a businessman is desperately trying to make dealings that maintain his empire, or a stenographer/office clerk are seeking out ways in which to keep their head above water, the characters are entirely preoccupied with what they can make of their life both in finance and in notoriety. Could this be connected to Berlin being a scene of an infamous uprising at the time the film was made? I only have 500 words to work with, so I’ll leave the reader to answer that one.

Grand Hotel is the Gosford Park of its day. Large numbers of characters whose storylines criss-cross and collide in unexpected and sometimes touching ways. Whatever happens to the characters before they enter the hotel, and after they exit, is hinted at, and left for the audience to imagine. And as they leave with their own personal dramas, new occupants come in. Really, we are seeing these characters through the eyes of the hotel- we see a brief snapshot, but it’s a salacious and intriguing one.

Lionel Barrymore was the stand-out for me- he evoked a combination of tragedy and comedy in a man who has had to work constantly to stay alive, but now intends to live in the truest sense of the word. Joan Crawford was also engaging in her young pre-wire-hanger days, although quite frankly she could recite Mary Had a Little Lamb and I would hang on her every word. Although she became more synonymous with her feistier, bitchier roles in The Women and Mildred Pierce, here I found her endearing and sympathetic- even if she is nearly upstaged by her eyebrows.

Greta Garbo was less entrancing for me. Despite this being one of the first ever films with an expensive all-star ensemble cast, it is obvious that Garbo has demanded some individuality. She spends very little time with any other cast member except John Barrymore, and her flailing arm gestures and constant cries of despair left me cold. She was certainly an actress of her time (one of the biggest box office draws, in fact), but her career plummeted in the late-30’s, and she would retire in the early 40’s to live in seclusion. To be honest, I can see why- she seems to have had little scope for anything other than tragic glamour.

Overall, I would say that Grand Hotel is good but not great (and certainly not “grand”). Despite being the height of glamour and stardom in 1932, I found it whimsical to the point of being inconsequential. All Quiet on the Western Front had bigger things to say about warfare and even Cimarron had more scope and ambition. Grand Hotel has some involvement but my opinion is that a Best Picture winner should hit you hard like a hammer, and this film simply diverted me for 108 minutes. 

Highlight

Kringelein’s confrontation with his company CEO, Preysing, in which the former stands up for the Little Man with defiance and courage.

Lowlight

Greta Garbo’s “I want to be alone” overacting feels dated now. It’s how I behave when the wrong country wins Eurovision.

Mark

6/10

4. Cimarron (1930/31)

So wild that we accidentally got a Korean version...

Plot Intro

The film begins in Oklahoma, 1889, during the Land Rush, in which vast numbers of Americans raced to own millions of acres of unclaimed land. Amidst the melee is Yancey Cravat (Richard Dix) who brings his beloved wife, Sabra (Irene Dunne), and son, Cimarron, to lawless Oklahoma to make his fortune as a newspaper editor. As the decades flow by, Oklahoma grows in commerce, and Yancey and Sabra come up against miscreant cowboys, racial tensions, downtrodden prostitutes and their own domestic and personal struggles.

Paul says...

My initial thoughts about Cimarron were, “Urgh, a Western. One of my least favourite genres.” I generally find them too drenched in machismo and artificial fight scenes. Thankfully, Cimarron goes beyond the conventions of Westerns by covering a vast time period and dealing with race relations and moral values in more detail, rather than goodies and baddies just shooting each other.

The film, in summary, is much like the Ancient Epics of Homer and Virgil. We have a hero who may be flawed in his childish desire for adventure rather than stability, but is admirable in his noble nature, fighting for what is right even in the face of death. We have a wife who is often left to fend for herself (Sabra is, at one point, compared to Homer’s Penelope in The Odyssey) but is stalwart and courageous in her own way. We have an episodic structure designed to display the hero’s supremacy in various ways, and teach the viewers how best to live one’s life. We have the hero’s and heroine’s children carrying on their legacy. And we have a story centred around the establishment of a new society in a previously uninhabited land. Cimarron is essentially Virgil’s Aeneid for 20th-century American audiences who wanted to celebrate the founding and development of their nation.

Is it effective? In some instances, yes. There’s a tremendous opening scene displaying the beginning of the Land Rush, in which hundreds of horses and carriages charge across empty fields to win the best piece of land they can find. The film also displays the passing of time skilfully by beginning each “episode” with a view of the same Oklahoma street. This shows its gradual transformation from cowboy-ridden shanty town to a metropolis of skyscrapers and motor cars. The characters also age believably. In fact, the side characters get most of the best lines and moments- particularly Sabra’s closest female friend, a prototype for Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey. 

On the flip side, Richard Dix’s overacting is so abominable that his inspirational speeches came across as trite to me, and I felt nothing during moments when we should have been cheering him on. There’s a disgracefully racist depiction of a black servant boy (there’s lots of, “Oh please sir, do take-m me to Oklahomey!”). The jumps in time are sometimes awkward and  will suddenly explain a great deal of plot through cue cards. Finally, Sabra gets so much character development in the final half hour that I found that I wanted the film to be about her, not her husband.

Cimarron probably won the Oscar because it’s very, very American, in the same way that The Aeneid is very, very Roman. But you get a good sense of scope and magnitude from it, even if it’s not the most emotionally involving piece. 

Highlight

The opening 5 mins- a masterclass in big-scale filming.

Lowlight

Richard Dix’s acting. There’s only so many big gestures one can take.

Mark

6/10  

Doug says...

One of the things that’s really becoming clear as we launch into our fourth (fourth!? already??) Best Picture winner is that film-making in general has changed. Where now audiences are lightning-quick to pick up on references, objects and plot points, the 1930s audience seemingly was not. The editing of this film is not unlike its Oscar-winning predecessors, with long camera shots pointing out the obvious (an example is when Yancey Cravat the protagonist is eating a sandwich and we are treated to a 20-second-long shot of the sandwich on a plate). So I’m having to try and shelve my annoyance at being spoon-fed these things, and focus mainly on the plot. 

And there are some good things here. By covering a period from the late 1800s right through to 1930, we are shown the gradual - and startling - development of Oklahoma. At the beginning chancers trying their luck are able to grab a piece of shrubland of their own, and we get to see these bits of rough land develop and transform at first into tented ‘offices’, then into basic wooden buildings, and by the end huge 1930s towerblocks, immediately recognisable to modern audiences. A street name is roughly scrawled on a piece of cardboard in the beginning, and by the end, we see the same name now on ‘modern’ signposts. It is a great insight into the quick and busy establishment of an American city. 

Another good element (although sadly underused) is Sabra, played by Irene Dunne. As wife of the (frankly bloody irritating) Yancey, she begins a small-minded wife and transforms into a congresswoman, who is accepting of her own child’s marriage to a Native American, and fights for equality. It’s a shame that the film chooses to focus on Yancey up till the last half hour, because it’s in this last half hour that the focus switches to Sabra and the film gets more interesting. 

Yancey as a protagonist is a bore. He vaguely gestures at some elements of ‘greatness’ - standing up for equal rights etc, but then wanders off and leaves his wife waiting for him for years at a time. While Paul has pointed out the Epic similarities, for me it doesn’t translate well to a modern story. Yancey just comes off as arrogant and annoying - and certainly no hero. The film itself tends towards unfortunate bouts of racism, along with unexplained plot points, reinforced by a lead actor who can’t really deliver his ‘stirring speeches’ with more than a damp fizzle of energy.

Westerns have never been something I itch to watch, and while this didn’t feel too Western-y (the section of the film about outlaws etc doesn’t last that long overall), this didn’t make me want to immediately seek out the nearest Clint Eastwood flick. Overwritten, overacted and overlong, it’s not particularly deserving of the Best Picture Oscar - but then it’s nowhere near as dreadful as Broadway Melody was. So all in all, it’s not terrible. 

Highlight

The comic side-character - a posh woman who reminded me of Eileen Atkins at her best, barging into scenes and stealing all the attention.

Low light

The odd lack of connection between scenes - events would happen and then not really ever be referred to again. The whole thing lacked cohesion. 

Mark

5/10