playing a Russian. The film was also seen as an artistic achievement in its art direction and production quality. The art director, Cedric Gibbons, was one of the most important and influential in the history of American film. The lobby scenes were extremely well done, portraying a 360° desk. This allowed audiences to watch the hotel action from all around the characters. It changed the way sets were made from that point onward. It was the first film to feature brothers Lionel and John Barrymore together. Later in the year, they would join their other sibling, Ethel, in Rasputin and the Empress. "I want to be alone" As Grusinskaya, Greta Garbo delivers the line "I want to be alone", and, immediately following, "I just want to be alone." Soon after, in conversation with Baron Felix von Geigern, she says, "And I want to be alone." Referring to its legendary use as a characterization of her personal reclusive life, Garbo later insisted, "I never said I want to be alone; I only said, 'I want to be let alone.' There is all the difference." Critical reception Alfred Rushford Greason of Variety comparing the film to the stage production, wrote "[it] may not entirely please the theatregoers who were fascinated by its deft stage direction and restrained acting, but it will attract and hold the wider public to which it is now addressed". He added, "The drama unfolds with a speed that never loses its grip, even for the extreme length of nearly two hours, and there is a captivating pattern of unexpected comedy that runs through it all, always fresh and always pat." Mordaunt Hall of The New York Times praised the performances of Greta Garbo and John Barrymore, in a mostly positive review. "The picture adheres faithfully to the original", he said, "and while it undoubtedly lacks the life and depth and color of the play, by means of excellent characterizations it keeps the audience on the qui vive." Film Daily called it an "engrossing drama" that "never lags", and "one of the classiest moving picture affairs you've seen in a long time". John Mosher of The New Yorker called it a "tricky, clever film", praising Goulding as "a director at last to give Garbo her due" and for his "ingenious" camera work, "relishing, I suspect, the advantages the screen offers in these respects over the stage, where the awkward