Grandeur of ‘Grand Hotel’ more than Garbo
The Grand Hotel in Berlin in the waning days of the Weimar Republic was famously the place where “people come, people go. Nothing ever happens.”
Except on this night in Irving Thalberg’s megaproduction for MGM, which brought together five of its top roster of stars — Greta Garbo, Wallace Beery, Lionel Barrymore, John Barrymore and Joan Crawford — in an ensemble piece directed by Edmund Goulding that was one of the biggest early sound hits and won the Oscar for best picture.
To this day, it is the only best picture winner not to have been nominated in any other category, but that was only because the supporting actor and actress categories had yet too be created, and there are some wonderful performances here.
Strangely, that does not include Garbo. She had the big line in the movie — “I want to be alone,” with which she was forever associated; and the big romance, with down-on-his-luck thief John Barrymore. But it is one of her least effective performances, overly dramatic and broad (parodied by Marion Davies later that year in “Blondie of the Follies,” with Jimmy Durante as her Barrymore).
Yes, “Grand Hotel” is playing this weekend at the Berkeley Art Museum’s Pacific Film Archive as part of its Garbo retrospective (7 p.m. Sunday, June 24, 2155 Center St., Berkeley; 510-6420808; www.bampfa.org), but the real reasons to see it are Barrymore, Barrymore and Crawford, the beating hearts of the picture.
They play life’s unlucky losers, victims of the arrogant and wealthy. Cruelty is the path to power, according to author Vicki Baum, an Austrian Jew who worked as a parlor maid in a Berlin hotel for six weeks as research for her novel “Menschen im Hotel” (“People at a Hotel”), which was adapted into a Broadway play and then the film.
The villain of “Grand Hotel” is Preysing (Beery), an industrialist trying to save his company through a proposed merger. He hires Flaemmchen (Crawford), a beautiful young woman who is, this week at least, working as a stenographer, but his interest in her heads in an unprofessional direction.
Preysing is also, indirectly, the cause of the many troubles of Otto Kringelein (Lionel Barrymore), a decadeslong employee at Preysing’s factory. He has been diagnosed with a terminal illness, and lacking proper health care, he decides to spend his meager life savings living as a big shot for a few days at a swanky Grand Hotel suite.
Baron Felix von Geigern (John Barrymore) is living under something of a death sentence himself. Once wealthy, he has fallen on hard times, and to erase a heavy debt that might get him killed, he books himself into the Grand Hotel to steal his way out of trouble. His target: the pearl necklace of Grusinskaya (Garbo), the high-maintenance famous Russian ballerina whose self-absorption and prima donna persona drive everyone around her this short of crazy.
The problem with the baron is that he is too nice. He falls in love with Grusinskaya; forget the pearls. He could steal the life savings of Kringelein, but he likes him too much, and defends him against Preysing, whose type of overbearing sense of entitlement is something the baron has dealt with before.
His defense of Kringelein and confrontations with Preysing win him the admiration of Flaemmchen. Together, the three of them — the dying salaryman, the working-class girl and the disgraced baron — form a common bond of kindness and humility out of step with the times.
The scenes between the Barrymores truly do project a sense of brotherly love. Crawford was so good that Thalberg added two weeks of shooting to beef up Garbo’s part so Crawford couldn’t steal the picture.
But she did, anyway. “Grand Hotel” is still a pretty good film, but one wonders how it played before the Garbo additions. Gonna guess it was even better.
“Kiki’s Delivery Service”: Hayao Miyazaki’s 1989 anime masterpiece is the midnight movie at the Clay. Miyazaki’s imagination could be deliriously surreal (“Spirited Away”), politically crusading (“Princess Mononoke”), charmingly bizarre (“My Neighbor Totoro”) and even unapologetically adult (“The Wind Rises”), but he never made a more sweet and simple film than the utterly delightful “Kiki’s Delivery Service” (1989), about a young witch who has to serve an apprenticeship (with her little cat as helper) at a small town that unfortunately has a “no witches” policy. When she uses her broom’s flying powers to help a baker and his wife deliver their wares, however, she brings the town together. Midnight Friday-Saturday, June 22-23. Landmark’s Clay Theatre. 2261 Fillmore St., S.F. 415-5619921. www.landmarktheatres.com
“My Son Tenzin”: A Tibetan monk arrives in the United States to search for his grown son, who was sent away years earlier to get an education, in this film by Tsultrim Dorjee and Tashi Wangchuck. Lead actor Tsering Dorjee Bawa will be there in person and give a live performance of Tibetan songs at this screening that is part of the International Buddhist Film Festival. 4:15 p.m. Sunday, June 24. Smith Rafael Film Center, 1118 Fourth St., San Rafael. 415-454-1222. www.cafilm.org
The real reasons to see it are Lionel Barrymore, John Barrymore and Joan Crawford, the beating hearts of the picture.