Film

Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more
 

Grand Hotel (1932)

Director: Edmund Goulding

Average user rating
No reviews

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

The 'Nashville' of its day, Grand Hotel's reputation has outgrown its actual quality, and it is now interesting only as an example of the portmanteau style: an interwoven group of contrasting stories allowing a bunch of stars to do their most familiar turns. Cigarette cards here include lonely Garbo, mercurial John Barrymore, crusty Lionel, business-like Joan Crawford, bent Beery. Supervising and commenting on the operation are ageing Lewis Stone and twittering émigré Jean Hersholt. Throw in Cedric Gibbons as art director and cameraman William Daniels, and you have the perfect MGM vehicle - dead boring. Made a year later with a similar cast, Dinner at Eight is of more note in that it provides acidic insight into the star system that Grand Hotel represents. (From the play by William A Drake, itself an adaptation of a novel, Menschen im Hotel, by Vicki Baum.

Author: AN 0000-00-00 00:00:00

Time Out Film Guide

  • Print this page
  • Send to a friend

What do you think?
Post your review now

clear rating
Min 1 star. Zero stars will be treated as unrated.

*mandatory fields


Cast & crew

Director: Edmund Goulding

Producer: Irving Thalberg

Cast: Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, Wallace Beery, Joan Crawford, Lionel Barrymore, Lewis Stone, Jean Hersholt full cast

Duration: 115 mins


Features

Making a name for himself

Making a name for himself

Sin Nombre's Cary Joji Fukunaga learned his lessons well.

To the letter

Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.

Mind over matter

David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.

Fool's gold

Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.

We are the championed

Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."

A history of violence

Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.

True romantic

James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.

Playing in the dark

MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.

Junk bonds

Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.