Review of Grand Hotel (2008) by Jared F — 12 Jun 2007

Still today this film is regarded a classic. Indeed after 74 years this film shows it's wrinkles... but we all wish we could be so stylish and and full of vitality at 74 years of age.

Grand Hotel is a large, magnificent epic where as the famous line goes "nothing ever happens." There's more to life than money and death but the inhabitants are so caught up in those frivolities that living seems secondary.

The Baron wants money and Preysing wants money and Flaem wants money and Kringelein wants money. But Grusinskaya wants to escape from that that entices everyone else. It takes one who has been disenchanted with it all to see the frivolity of slaving away for something as intangible as money. Kingelein sees it too with some coaxing.

"Grand Hotel... always the same. People come, people go. Nothing ever happens. ".

Like every day life in fact--nothing here ever happens. Everyone thinks they're important in a world full of people who think they're more important than the last. It's a rat race where there is no clear winner--we all die and our money is worthless at that point. All that's truly important is to enjoy one's self.

Let your passions run rampant, that's the message here.

With such a grandiose plot in such a grand setting only the grandest of cast would do it justice. And indeed they deliver. John Barrymore steals the show here as the dashing, two-faced criminal who plays himself as a man of wealth and privilege. Though he knows he doesn't belong where he is--he has a respect for human life greater than a thief should. Joan Crawford was tragically gorgeous--she was truly grand, larger than the wealthiest who lived in the hotel.

This is a stunning classic, one worthy of it's status.