The only production of "Grand Hotel" I've ever seen that actually worked (that, in fact, was deeply moving) was the Broadway musical from the early '90s. Of course, it didn't do so well, being head and shoulders above both the original play and this "all-star" M-G-M romp.<br /><br />There is a reason why this is the only film to win "Best Picture" at the Academy Awards -- and nothing else.<br /><br />"If it ain't on the page, it ain't on the stage," actors have maintained since, oh, Euripides.<br /><br />Here, what's on the page is cliché after cliché -- pretentious conceits that were already old and tired by 1932.<br /><br />What's fascinating is certainly not Goulding's hackneyed direction, but the various actors' more or less successful attempts to breathe real life into cardboard roles.<br /><br />At the top of that list is Lionel Barrymore. In retrospect, and considering his entire filmic career, he was a far more versatile and better actor than John. One always gets a vivid character, and not Lionel Barrymore "playing" one. (Watch him in "You Can't Take It With You," for instance, when he had to work on crutches because of his advancing arthritis. Amazing.) <br /><br />Next, Joan Crawford. Third-billed, and even with added Garbo scenes to keep Crawford from walking off with "Grand Hotel," she still does.<br /><br />Crawford and Lionel Barrymore not only make their clichéd lines and characters wholly believable, they literally walk off into the sunrise together at the end, as clichés often do.<br /><br />Wallace Beery is wonderful and dimensional and even heart-breaking as Preysing. (He apparently only accepted the role because he was promised he would be the single star with a German accent.) <br /><br />John Barrymore, next, does the best he can playing a Baron who wears more eye shadow than Garbo. Oh, wait: Barrymore ALWAYS wore more eye shadow than his leading ladies. Whether a carryover from his theatrical makeups during his stage career, or a misguided attempt to give his puffy alcoholic's face some screen definition, it's hard to say. What's easy to say is that he's occasionally effective here, and affecting; but mostly self-conscious. "Why is that man wearing all that eye-shadow?" leads to an awareness that one can almost count, beat by beat, his stagy timing of even so simple a gesture as gently chucking Crawford's chin, or his vain attempt to make a mediocre script sound like iambic pentameter. In "Bill of Divorcement," with Katherine Hepburn, in this same year, he still wears more eye shadow than she, and is still given to the odd sing-song stage (as opposed to film) line reading. But he's much better. Then again, so is that play.<br /><br />Then there's Garbo. Truly, a stunning film actress, an immortal phenomenon (and, as always, photographed by the brilliant William Daniels, breathtakingly beautiful). But please, out of courtesy to her talent and legend, don't compare her performance here with any of her others ("Camille," say, or "Ninotchka" or "Anna Karenina"). Director Goulding allowed her favorite mannerisms to get the best of her: the constantly dancing eyebrows in closeups, the tilt-back of the head to gaze soulfully at ceilings (were cue-cards pasted up there?).<br /><br />Lewis Stone gets nothing to do but embody a one-man Greek Chorus, over and over, about (to paraphrase): "People come and go. But nothing ever happens in the Grand Hotel." <br /><br />Adrian's costumes and Cedric Gibbons' art direction provide as much drama and character as the script. Possibly more: one finds oneself admiring the detailing in a hotel room door, or the sweep of a "moderne" upholstered chair in Lionel Barrymore's suite during his ecstatically played (and largely silent) drunk scene, at the expense of what's happening between the predictable characters.<br /><br />Watchable? Certainly. A revelation? Yes, when Crawford and Lionel Barrymore are on screen. Great? No. It's a pretentious novel turned into a pretentious play turned into a pretentious film -- pretending to be profound, timeless and enduring.<br /><br />Instead of the Grand Cliché that it is.