...perhaps just a tad too much swooning and preening from its two principal stars to make it an absolute personal favorite. But entertaining? You bet.
Then, there's Miss Flaemmchen, played by a young, flirtatious, and totally captivating Joan Crawford, a stenographer for Preysing who is really a gold digger willing to do anything for a free ride. She agrees to accompany the married Preysing to England (minus the wife) as his "assistant." Finally, there are the hotel porter, Senf, played by Jean Hersholt, whose wife is expecting a baby at any moment; and the enigmatic Dr. Otternschlag, played by Lewis Stone, a physician disfigured in the War, who hangs around the hotel and paces and waits, for what we don't know. Except that he becomes our observer of life and death and rebirth.
The interrelationships are fascinating and endlessly diverting; the Strauss waltzes playing in the background are charming; and the art deco set designs are wonderful. The huge, circular lobby with its open atrium to the top floor, the lobbies on each level overlooking the central space, is a delight to the eye as well as conveying the idea that life goes round and round.
In the end, it's all about love and money. But mostly money. What isn't?
Video:
The picture has been transferred to disc from an excellent original print at a fairly high bit rate ensuring probably the best video quality we could hope from this old a source. There is a soft blur to the image, a small degree of fading, and a fine grain, all most likely inherent to the source. But because of the relatively low compression used, there are few to no noticeable digital artifacts to be seen. It's not great picture quality, but it's better than we have any right to expect.
Audio:
The first thing one notices about the Dolby Digital 1.0 monaural audio is its smoothly agreeable nature. The second thing is a very slight background hiss. The third things are its limited frequency and dynamic ranges. But the latter issues are to be expected of a soundtrack that was produced less than half a dozen years into the talking era. It is quite satisfactory for its job.
Extras:
This special edition DVD contains a new making-of documentary, "Checking Out: Grand Hotel," that is really quite good, if somewhat brief at only twelve minutes. It leaves one wanting much more. Then there's an eighteen-minute Vitaphone musical parody of "Grand Hotel" called "Nothing Ever Happens" that is amusing. This is followed by a nine-minute newsreel of the films première that features practically every star in Hollywood showing up on camera. Finally, there are thirty-two scene selections; a theater announcement about the film, "Just a Word of Warning"; and two theatrical trailers, one for this film and one for the 1945 remake. English and French are offered as spoken language options, with English, French, and Spanish as subtitle choices.
Also, if you buy "Grand Hotel" in the big box set, you get the 2005 documentary disc, "Garbo." It's eighty-six minutes long, divided into twenty-four chapters, and narrated by Julie Christie. The documentary examines Garbo's life, her career, and her contradictions through interviews with friends, family, actors, biographers, critics, writers, and filmmakers. I'm not sure any of them shed any new light on the figure, but it's a fascinating look at a fascinating character, nonetheless.
Parting Thoughts:
It had been maybe forty years since I watched "Grand Hotel" in a college film class, and I was concerned it would strike me today as old-fashioned and corny to a fault. It didn't. The movie kept me involved the whole way, with perhaps just a tad too much swooning and preening from its two principal stars to make it an absolute personal favorite. But entertaining? You bet.
"Grand Hotel. Always the same. People come, people go. Nothing ever happens."
The interrelationships are fascinating and endlessly diverting; the Strauss waltzes playing in the background are charming; and the art deco set designs are wonderful. The huge, circular lobby with its open atrium to the top floor, the lobbies on each level overlooking the central space, is a delight to the eye as well as conveying the idea that life goes round and round.
In the end, it's all about love and money. But mostly money. What isn't?
Video:
The picture has been transferred to disc from an excellent original print at a fairly high bit rate ensuring probably the best video quality we could hope from this old a source. There is a soft blur to the image, a small degree of fading, and a fine grain, all most likely inherent to the source. But because of the relatively low compression used, there are few to no noticeable digital artifacts to be seen. It's not great picture quality, but it's better than we have any right to expect.
Audio:
The first thing one notices about the Dolby Digital 1.0 monaural audio is its smoothly agreeable nature. The second thing is a very slight background hiss. The third things are its limited frequency and dynamic ranges. But the latter issues are to be expected of a soundtrack that was produced less than half a dozen years into the talking era. It is quite satisfactory for its job.
Extras:
This special edition DVD contains a new making-of documentary, "Checking Out: Grand Hotel," that is really quite good, if somewhat brief at only twelve minutes. It leaves one wanting much more. Then there's an eighteen-minute Vitaphone musical parody of "Grand Hotel" called "Nothing Ever Happens" that is amusing. This is followed by a nine-minute newsreel of the films première that features practically every star in Hollywood showing up on camera. Finally, there are thirty-two scene selections; a theater announcement about the film, "Just a Word of Warning"; and two theatrical trailers, one for this film and one for the 1945 remake. English and French are offered as spoken language options, with English, French, and Spanish as subtitle choices.
Also, if you buy "Grand Hotel" in the big box set, you get the 2005 documentary disc, "Garbo." It's eighty-six minutes long, divided into twenty-four chapters, and narrated by Julie Christie. The documentary examines Garbo's life, her career, and her contradictions through interviews with friends, family, actors, biographers, critics, writers, and filmmakers. I'm not sure any of them shed any new light on the figure, but it's a fascinating look at a fascinating character, nonetheless.
Parting Thoughts:
It had been maybe forty years since I watched "Grand Hotel" in a college film class, and I was concerned it would strike me today as old-fashioned and corny to a fault. It didn't. The movie kept me involved the whole way, with perhaps just a tad too much swooning and preening from its two principal stars to make it an absolute personal favorite. But entertaining? You bet.
"Grand Hotel. Always the same. People come, people go. Nothing ever happens."
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