Ketrivie
It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.
Keira Brennan
The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.
Aneesa Wardle
The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.
jacksflicks
Supposedly this movie was popular at the box office. I guess people were eager to see a timely dramatization, such as it was, of the defeat of Germany played as an ersatz Grand Hotel. But the story is so sloppily put together, with so many gaffs, so much broken continuity, and scenes that lead to nowhere, that I wonder wonder what so many reviewers giving good scores are smoking.Here are just a few examples: In one scene Fay Emerson introduces Helmut Dantine, in an SS major's uniform, as Major, then she and others call him, still with his major's pips, Captain. The bombers practically wreck the air raid shelter, but leave the hotel above it untouched. Alan Hale, as a Nazi official, is disposed of, as a suspect in an SS officer's killing -- completely out of the blue (he's innocent and not connected in any way) -- because, well, his character needs disposing of. Emerson and Dantine are strangers one moment and intimate lovers the next, with no exposition. Peter Lorre does his stock "drunk and dissolute" scene and then is suddenly neat, spiffy and sober. Andrea King's Lisa Dorn gives up Dantine to the SS, for coffee, but it's Emerson who gets shot. (Well, this is a Faye Emerson vehicle.) There's also a lame reprise of Lewis Stone's "doctor waiting for a message" in Grand Hotel.Raymond Massey has a great part, as a doomed general, and the other actors do their stuff well, but none are allowed to develop their characters. It's really too bad their efforts, and a potentially interesting story, are wasted on incompetent direction and slapdash editing.
utgard14
Interesting movie about the goings-on of various characters at the Hotel Berlin near the end of WWII. Specifically the search for a member of the German underground who has escaped from a concentration camp. Not surprisingly, this is from the author of Grand Hotel. Unlike the film adaptation of Grand Hotel, this one doesn't have an all-star cast but it does have a cast of solid character actors. Raymond Massey and Faye Emerson are standouts but really the whole cast is good. Peter Lorre steals the few scenes he's in. It's a pretty good though not great WWII movie with a unique setting and some frank (for the time) talk about concentration camps and the Holocaust. Also, if you ever wanted to see Alan Hale as a Nazi, here's your chance.
LeonLouisRicci
Not Without some Interest, this Ultimately Unsatisfying bit of Studio Filmmaking Echoes WWII Propaganda. But at the Time of the Production and the Films Release the Outcome was a Foregone Conclusion so there isn't Much here that is Heavy Handed or Preachy.In Fact, the Best that has been said about this Forgotten Film is it's Evenhandedness in Portraying the German People as "Not all Evil". The Movie is Mostly a Yawner but it is Kept Awake by the Multitude of Characters and the Movement of the Plot and its Myriad of Interwoven Interactions.Each One is given a Speech or Two and the Plot Weaves in and out of Patriotic Duty, Blind Obedience, Desperate Survival Tactics, Among the Stock Characters. Nothing Really Seems that Demanding and the Whole Thing comes off as a Stage Play with Stiff B-Actors.There are a Few Highlights, like Peter Lorre as a Scientific Experimenter that is Suffering from a Guilt Complex and can't seem to Find One Good German. The Other Character that Stands Out is the Hotel Hostess (read Prostitute) Played with some Pathos by Faye Emerson.Overall it is a Weary Movie that Reflects the Weariness of the War and by this Time Most Folks, Germans or Americans, were so Drained of Emotion by Their Losses that Another Melodramatic Story was just Tiresome. That is Good Description of the Film...Tiresome.
robert-temple-1
Most cineastes have seen 'Grand Hotel' (1932) at least once, if only because of Greta Garbo. It was based on the play and novel 'Menschen im Hotel' by Vicki Baum, whose novels were the basis for numerous Hollywood movies, and who was a best-selling novelist in several languages. Here we see a highly complex ensemble drama set in a hotel again, but this time the action takes place in Berlin just as the Second World War is ending and the Nazi regime is falling apart. The film is well directed by Peter Godfrey, and contains some wonderful performances, one of the best being by Raymond Massey as a German general of the old school, who had been involved in one of the plots to kill Hitler which failed. He sports a monocle with applomb but never over-plays, and portrays the man with distinction and impeccable judgement. Henry Daniell as a keen Gestapo officer also does not over-play, and the restraint he shows is admirable, as Gestapo officers are such obvious targets for over-acting. The numerous dramas and sub-plots in this highly complex film are all satisfactory and convincing. The film has a tremendous dynamism as a multiple-drama, we are swept away by the dilemmas of all the characters, both noble and ignoble, and it all works. This must rank as one of the most successful wartime film dramas, and it is all about people, real people this time rather than cardboard cutouts. This film should be more widely known.
