Cheap Grand Hotel (DVD) (Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, Joan Crawford) (Edmund Goulding) Price

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Customer Reviews of Grand Hotel

GRAND HOTEL IN LESS THAN GRAND TRANSFER
"Grand Hotel" concerns guests staying at Berlin's Grand Hotel. There's the high strung, tempermental ballerina (Greta Garbo), the sassy vamp-like stenographer (Joan Crawford), the boorish industrialist (Wallace Beery), the stricken labourer (Lionel Barrymore)and the devilishly handsome baron (John Barrymore). These seemingly separate lives cross over - some happily so, others with tragic circumstances - all thoroughly absorbing and brilliantly performed. At the time of its release "Grand Hotel" was the first movie to feature more than one star above the title credits.
TRANSFER: After years of looking as though the camera negative had been fed through a meat grinder, this DVD digital remastering is a considerable improvement. Having said that, a lot of work is still needed to get this one looking up to par. Solid blacks are about the best thing on this DVD. Contrast levels appear too low in many of the scenes. There are a considerable number of age related artifacts and quite a bit of film grain present on this 70 plus year old classic. The audio has been extensively cleaned up but continues to exhibit considerable hiss. Truly, if this is a special edition it's one of the poorest I've seen.
EXTRAS: Some featurettes that round out the history - if too briefly, of this classic film.
BOTTOM LINE: "Grand Hotel" is undeniably engrossing and a brilliant Oscar winner that is sure to enthrall for decades to come! For the film and NOT the transfer, this is an absolute must for your film library!!!

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I JUST WANT TO BE ALONE.....
Greta Garbo first uttered this phrase in MGM's "Grand Hotel", released in 1932. "Grand Hotel" is a classic masterpiece set in Berlin's ritzy art-deco hotel. It's the story of five guests whose lives criss-cross for just a brief time....(1) an aging, suicidal Russian ballerina named Grusinskaya(Greta Garbo). (2) the noble, elegant, handsome Baron Felix von Geigern(John Barrymore), in reality, financially broke and a jewel thief. (3) an ambitious,young, lovely stenographer Flaemmchen(Joan Crawford) looking for fame and the good life. (4) the factory clerk Kringelein(Lionel Barrymore) out to live the good life one time before he dies. (5) General Preysing(Wallace Beery) a ruthless, cold-hearted industrialist. Drinking, gambling, and a love triangle, "Grand Hotel" was released at the height of the Depression. Based on Vicki Baum's novel and play, it earned 1 Million dollars for MGM, and became the most profitable movie of 1932. The first All-Star epic, Lewis Stone and Jean Hersholt round out the stellar cast. This is the finest of 5 films starring the Barrymore brothers, and is John Barrymore's perhaps final great performance. Just 10 years later, alcohol would create his sudden demise and biography in the famous book, "Goodnight Sweet Prince". Jean Harlow's elderly husband, Paul Bern, was the producer. He died in their Beverly Hills home during production in a scandalous suicide. AMC Cable channel touts a huge list of 1930's classics, but they're wrong. There's only a short list, and "Grand Hotel"s near the top. Near the end of the film, the timid, dying factory clerk is suddenly enriched by luck in a gambling game. He toasts his friends: "To life! To the magnificent, dangerous, brief, brief, wonderful life...and the courage to live it! You know, Baron, I've only lived since last night, but that little while seems longer than all the time that's gone before..." DVD, where are you?

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A 5-star Movie in a 3-star DVD package
The extra features on this DVD edition are highly desirable -- get the DVD for the features, but get a recent VHS tape for a better print. The DVD release is so grainy it's fuzzy and often seems out-of-focus. Contrast is murky is many scenes. In one specific scene: when Joan Crawford enters a dark room and discovers Beery standing over the baron's corpse; the grim heaviness of the textures and depth of shadows, the stark horror on Crawford's face -- these are lost in the fuzzy grain of the DVD but are clearly preserved on VHS. Having seen this film many times on the big screen and on tape, it appears that the DVD seriously lacks the smooth, almost lush visual quality of earlier issues. This is also one of those old-line films that looks gorgeous on a big theater screen but suffers dramatically on smaller devices. Despite the shortcomings of the DVD, this is still the grande ol' Grand Hotel of yore, a relic (but a magnificent one) of late Victorian melodrama (and dig Rachmaninoff in the background during Garbo's scenes!). But I'd still advise the VHS tape if you want the rich graphics of the original. It also appears that the master for this transfer, whatever its source, has visible physical defects that I don't see on earlier tapes. The 2-channel DVD sound is not representative of the weighty mono original, has a clearly audible hiss and too much treble. The sexy undertone of Garbo's voice is missing here, as is J. Barrymore's dramatic baritone (Compare scene 8 on the DVD when Barrymore mutters "I don't like your tone", with the VHS version -- audibly, the sound of that line on the tape is more darkly effective). The look and sound of the DVD fail to convey the unique, all-important "deco" qualities that somehow add so much to the original film's overall effect. I'd suggest that the VHS edition is something most classic movie fans will appreciate more than they would the DVD. An aside: originally, Garbo didn't want to share star honors with Crawford out of fear that Crawford would diminish Garbo's role. Garbo was partially correct: Crawford steals the show, but Garbo is still a sight to behold.