It's not hard to see why Grand Hotel won Best Picture. But it is dated and full of annoyances. It concerns the goings on of various guests at the Grand Hotel in Berlin. Lionel Barrymore plays a very annoying salt-of-the-earth type, who brings out the best in John Barrymore and Joan Crawford. His terminal illness could not advance quickly enough for me.
But boy does this have an eye for composition. More than a few times the lighting and the camera-work conspire to produce beautiful images that fill the entire greyscale range, and feature deep blacks; as when Joan Crawford is escorted into a dark room; or when the witness to a murder flees screen-right to a non-opening door. Occasionally the maudlin story breaks for startling camera-work as when; Wallace Beery stands in the smoky foreground as his associates bale on him; or more impressively, John Barrymores body exits the hotel via the service entrance as deliveries are being made; It's absolutely striking and foreshadows the objectives of realism by 2 or 3 decades. This is Hollywood? It's also way ahead of noir.
Crawford is a joy to watch in every single scene. (and I'm not a Crawford fan) Garbo is ridiculous, giving a scenery-devouring performance that is always operating at the wrong scale. I wanted to throw a shoe at her head.
But boy does this have an eye for composition. More than a few times the lighting and the camera-work conspire to produce beautiful images that fill the entire greyscale range, and feature deep blacks; as when Joan Crawford is escorted into a dark room; or when the witness to a murder flees screen-right to a non-opening door. Occasionally the maudlin story breaks for startling camera-work as when; Wallace Beery stands in the smoky foreground as his associates bale on him; or more impressively, John Barrymores body exits the hotel via the service entrance as deliveries are being made; It's absolutely striking and foreshadows the objectives of realism by 2 or 3 decades. This is Hollywood? It's also way ahead of noir.
Crawford is a joy to watch in every single scene. (and I'm not a Crawford fan) Garbo is ridiculous, giving a scenery-devouring performance that is always operating at the wrong scale. I wanted to throw a shoe at her head.