At a luxurious Berlin hotel between both World Wars, the once-wealthy Baron Felix von Gaigern supports himself as a thief and gambler. The baron romances one of his marks, the aging ballerina Grusinskaya, and teams with dying accountant Otto Kringelein against his former boss, crooked industrialist Preysing, and his ambitious stenographer, Flaemmchen.
It is quite a feat to take a popular Broadway play and turn it into a successful feature film, especially one which won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Grand Hotel does a great job at balancing humorous moments with more serious, somber moments. When a film has more than two or three main characters, it can be difficult to balance the intersecting stories, and keep the flow of the overall story consistent. Fortunately, Grand Hotel succeeds in this regard. There's a line stated by a doctor staying at the hotel, Dr. Otternschlag, which helps to set up the pacing of the film: "Grand Hotel...always the same. People come, people go. Nothing ever happens."
At first glance, Grand Hotel comes off as cheesy, with several of the characters acting in a much more grandiose scale than what is normally seen, especially from a film made early on in the 1930's. Part of the reason is most likely due to the time period still being so close to when silent films were popular, when actors relied on actions and facial expressions to tell a story instead of dialogue. If one takes a deeper look however, then Grand Hotel can - and should - be considered a classic, plain and simple. In some ways it is a little dated, yet it still retains a certain charm seen even to this day.
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