Guests at a posh Berlin hotel struggle through worry, scandal, and heartache.
Ratings
Curator score: 8.0/10
IMDb: 7.3/10
Rotten Tomatoes: 85%
Metacritic: 79
TMDB: 7.0/10
Director
Edmund Goulding
Production
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Cast
Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery, Lionel Barrymore, Lewis Stone, Jean Hersholt, Robert McWade, Purnell Pratt, Ferdinand Gottschalk, Rafaela Ottiano, Morgan Wallace, Tully Marshall, Frank Conroy, Murray Kinnell, Edwin Maxwell, John Davidson, Allen Jenkins, Eric Mayne, Philo McCullough
Curator Review
Verdict
A landmark early ensemble melodrama with real star power, elegant hotel-bound storytelling, and a surprisingly modern sense of intersecting lives. It can feel a little stagey and soap-operatic, but the atmosphere, performances, and structure still make it rewarding.
Best for
classic Hollywood fans
ensemble dramas
pre-Code and early talkie enthusiasts
viewers who like star-driven melodrama
fans of elegant, confined settings
Skip if
you want fast pacing or action
you dislike theatrical early-sound acting
you prefer intimate character studies over multi-plot ensembles
you need strong on-screen chemistry between every major star
Overview
Grand Hotel is one of those movies that feels like a blueprint for a whole kind of prestige ensemble drama. The pleasure is in the circulation of people through a luxurious space, where vanity, loneliness, money, and mortality keep brushing past each other in corridors and lobbies. It is polished, witty, and surprisingly fluid for an early talkie, with the hotel itself functioning like a little society in miniature.
Worth noting
The film’s biggest draw is the cast, and it absolutely understands the value of star presence even when it withholds the kind of crossover moments modern audiences might expect. That restraint can be frustrating, but it also gives the movie a strange, elegant shape: each storyline gets its own emotional temperature, then dissolves back into the crowd.
Bottom line
What lingers is the mood more than the plot. There is glamour here, but also fatigue and sadness, and the famous sense that life is just people arriving, leaving, and carrying their private disasters with them. For viewers open to old-Hollywood melodrama, it remains a charming and influential watch.
Top Letterboxd reviews
eely (3★) · 468 likes
I really relate to john barrymore rolling around on the floor with his dog and telling it it’s the only thing he’s ever loved.
ella (3★) · 445 likes
casting greta garbo and joan crawford in a movie together and not giving them a scene where they interact should be considered a federal crime!
Alicia Malone (4★) · 389 likes
An early prototype for the intersecting, multiple character plot. Here, it’s five different people staying at the Grand Hotel in Berlin - a baron, a ballerina, a stenographer, a dying man and a businessman - who all cross paths in one way or another. The film was publicized as the “battle of the stars” and director Edmund Goulding was nicknamed the “lion tamer” because of the number of high profile actors: Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore, Wallace Beery, Joan… more An early prototype for the intersecting, multiple character plot. Here, it’s five different people staying at the Grand Hotel in Berlin - a baron, a ballerina, a stenographer, a dying man and a businessman - who all cross paths in one way or another. The film was publicized as the “battle of the stars” and director Edmund Goulding was nicknamed the “lion tamer” because of the number of high profile actors: Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore, Wallace Beery, Joan… more
Ethan Colburn (3★) · 222 likes
“More stars than there are in heaven”
A great example of the power of MGM in early Hollywood. They assembled the most star-studded ensemble cast to that date, featuring Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, and John Barrymore among others.
I have trouble with some early talkies (with some big Busbee Berkeley exceptions) just because they’re so much less visually engaging than the silent films and they hadn’t totally figured out now to take advantage of sound. That being said, the way… more
phil (3.5★) · 159 likes
"People coming, people going – always coming and going – and nothing ever happens.”