I still like this film. It has some grievous over-acting by Garbo as a ballerina on the skids. But the film works for all that. Grushinskaya has passed her prime as a ballerina, and her world weariness masks her awareness that her days of international greatness are over. She has nothing to look forward to - in fact her position is not that different from Anne Bancroft in THE TURNING POINT, who can teach ballet, but has no family life to comfort her like her old friend/rival Shirley MacLaine does.<br /><br />She momentarily does get a shot for happiness in retirement: she meets Baron Geiger (John Barrymore) and finds he would be able to satisfy her. And he finds she would be fine for him. But his problem is he is broke, and owes his criminal partners for the money that set him up in this great hotel in Berlin. He has to pay them back - he was going to steal Grushinskaya's jewels, but he won't do that now.<br /><br />GRAND HOTEL is like that, every time you watch it. It was written in the aftermath of World War I, and keeping that in mind you see the fractured bodies and lives that are colliding in the hotel. Lewis Stone, for example, is the man who makes the famous statement about "nothing ever happens" at the conclusion of the film. His Doctor Otternschlag is the hotel doctor, and is not very observant (by the time he makes the comment a murder has occurred in the hotel, and he is unaware of it). His face is scarred by a gas attack in the war. The war has probably made the doctor relatively quiet - and seeking quiet as much as possible. Hence his blindness. Wallace Beery is Preysling the textile manufacturer who is there for a big business conference and is facing bankruptcy - as was all of Germany (which had terrible inflation in 1923, due to war reparation and debt). Geiger's Pre-war cushion of wealth and position were swept away with the Hohenzollern dynasty in 1918. He was unlucky enough to survive his world, and most of his friends. And the small fry in the film: Kringelein (Lionel Barrymore) and Flaemchen (Joan Crawford) find their futures in considerable doubt too. Lionel is dying (we are never quite sure of what, but it sounds like it's industrial related - he works for Preysling's firm), and Crawford is aware that secretaries are a dime a dozen and needs to better herself - even if it means sleeping with the likes of Preysling. One can also add Senf (Jean Hersholt) who has to stay at his hotel job, while his wife is facing a dangerous childbirth which is worrying him to death.<br /><br />The collisions between the characters is fascinating too, as the Pre-war standards of social class is up in the air now. Preysling is aware of his feet of clay but he is still known as a big textile manufacturer to the public. So he is not deeply impressed by John Barrymore's Baron, but every time they confront each other, the Baron's superior breeding outshines Preysling's pompous bluster. Kringelein too is confronted by Preysling who thinks the bookkeeper's appearance at that expensive hostelry suggests embezzlement. Kringelein not only shows that he is not in a position to be threatened by police or discharge, but adds that Preysling's blunders are such as to have merited being fired if he hadn't been boss. Preysling does make a kind of headway with Flaemchen but it is only on a cash basis - she really is far friendlier to the Baron and Kringelein.<br /><br />GRAND HOTEL had been a major Broadway stage success when it was acquired by MGM. Preysling was originally played by Siegfried Ruman (later Sig Ruman) and the Baron by Albert Van Dekker (later Albert Dekker). Neither ended up in the MGM production, though both had distinguished film careers later on. The producer of the film was Paul Bern, who would be found dead in his home in 1932 just before the final cut was made on the movie. This is not the spot to analyze whether Bern was a suicide (officially he was) or was murdered by his wife (Jean Harlow) or some other person (a previous wife who killed herself a day or so afterward), but it led to Bern's friend and mentor Irving Thalberg completing the film as producer. Neither man's name is on the credits. However, Bern's hand is on the film - including the casting. He would have been facing a great producing career if he had lived.<br /><br />The most notable thing about the leads is that (except for Garbo's Swedish accent - here as a Russian ballerina) only Beery tries a German accent. It comes and goes, unfortunately, but Beery's lost bull in the china shop performance is good enough not to be harmed by it. Preysling is a weak man, who married the boss's daughter to get ahead but lacked the brains to keep the firm going. In the end he has to lie to try to survive his conference with rival Tully Marshall. Unfortunately he cannot control his passions and anger.<br /><br />It is said on this thread that Buster Keaton was supposed to play Kringelien. Presumably his alcoholism prevented it. But Lionel Barrymore gives a good accounting as the dying man. Yet Buster actually liked the idea. He tried to create interest in a comedy to star himself, Edward Everett Horton, and Marie Dressler called GRAND MILLS HOTEL, set in the "infamous" flop house in Manhattan. The same blending of the film's plots would have occurred. It never got beyond the drawing board. Laurel & Hardy would have been in the Tully Marshall and Wallace Beery roles, as button manufacturers who are trying to make a contract. Pity, it might have been a good comedy.