The Grand Hotel

This week, we talked about MGM and how the large Hollywood studios came to be the titans of the industry they are today.  I missed class on that day though unfortunately, so all I can talk about is what we watched later in the week.  We watched the Grand Hotel, a wonderful little film that is easily my favorite film we’ve watched so far.  Even though the film predates The Bride of Frankenstein by several years, I personally think that it has a much more human story and believable acting, and it takes place in a small contained set, leaving room for the actors to really get to know their characters.  Frankenstein didn’t really have that as it was trying to capture that lightning in a bottle grand scope of the original, leaving little room for lasting character moments outside of the monster himself and even that felt a little forced.  Frankenstein honestly felt a bit like a cheap cash grab, whereas Grand Hotel felt like a passion film.

The film opens up with a really smart way of introducing the characters to us.  All of the characters are on the phone talking, and you only hear the full conversation once they are finished cutting between all the characters.  It seems disjointed and strange, not to mention confusing, but this is all to service the line that is spoken afterwards by the doctor, “Grand Hotel. Always the same. People come, people go. Nothing ever happens.”  This quote shows just how pointless it is to chaotically run around and act important when you’re at the Grand Hotel.  The characters are all very good as well, with the Baron pretending to be someone he isn’t, and ending up being the lovesick do-gooder who meets a tragic fate in the end.  His love interest is a ballerina who thinks that she is all washed up, to the point of even wanting to commit suicide.  The most interesting character in the film is definitely Kringelein however, as he has a better character arc than almost any other character.  He goes from a dying man who’s down on his luck to someone who truly gets to appreciate life before he dies.  These aren’t even all the characters, just the integral three in my opinion.  With such a small cast, the film can really show off the characters in revealing new ways.

This is all of course not even taking into account the set itself.  While it sounds like the set would be absolutely massive if it’s a whole hotel, the sets were rather small and personal.  It was amazing how my eyes would move over the set and just be able to not be bored once.  Any space that the actors weren’t using wasn’t exactly empty space, but rather a believably empty space.  You really felt like you were in a hotel, but an expensive one in the lap of luxury.  I can’t even give this movie the justice it deserves, as there were some rather interesting undertones about what it really means to live that I didn’t even talk about, but I’ll end this post by saying that I can’t recommend this movie enough.

German Film, Russian Editing, and Talkies

During the time of the Weimar Republic, movies saw a bit of a cultural renaissance primarily occurring in Germany.  Movies that delved deep into the rich history of Germany were all the rage, with strong, coherent plots taking the forefront in these movies.  One thing that German cinema excelled in at this time period was how to portray evil forces at work.  A favorite thing to do in these films was to have a character who was a genius mastermind who has created an abomination and is using it to strike fear into the hearts of the masses.  This was of course very similar to situations that were popping up around Germany and the rest of Europe.  Dictators rising to power through fear was a perfect mirror for films about much of the same thing.  The movie Nosferatu was a little different however.  Since German cinema was always in a state of constant change, always pushing to see how limits could be tested, audience reaction was a big deal.  Audience’s reacted very positively to these stories of horror that many of the films were being made about, and Nosferatu was no exception to the horror genre.  It’s main difference was that before, the mad scientist and his creation were separate beings, and now they were one and the same.  The creature was not only cunning and insane, but violent and strong, a presence of horror not to be reckoned with.  The Germans continued to push boundaries even then.  Meanwhile, the Russians were working on their own style of film.  Their leaders discovered that film is an excellent way to reach the uneducated masses of their country as it was a visual medium rather than written.  This was all meant to inspire revolution, and it succeeded wonderfully for them.  They invented a new form of editing that was incredibly important to movies from that point on.  They created montage editing.  This form of editing was achieved by splicing two scenes together that seem to be random and have nothing to do with each other and putting them next to a third scene to give all the scenes a coherent and clever meaning.  This has been done countless times since its inception, and it has been perfected as an almost separate form of art outside of film.  It gives new meaning to scenes and can compact a narrative message in just a few shots, making it one of the most effective narrative forms of film.  This was all occurring while Universal was making some of the first “talkie” films.  Silent films were being pushed to the wayside, and sound was becoming increasingly important.  Many actors and actresses were unable to transfer from the silent era to these talkies because the public found their voices to be displeasing.  New talent was popping up, and Universal was making tons of monster movies, becoming the “house of horrors”.  Some examples of this were Dracula, Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, The Mummy, and The Bride of Frankenstein.

Analysis of Sunrise

I have to say, when I saw we had an assignment on our days off, I was more than a little bummed out.  But after watching Sunrise, A Song of Two Humans, I can pretty confidently say that I wish we were assigned more viewings like this.  A masterfully crafted film straight out of the silent film era, Sunrise demands attention from the get go.  Barring many of the classics from the era, most silent films have exaggerated movements and facial expressions that serve the genre of comedy best, and modern day viewers tend to see any other genre with these actions as overly comedic and not fitting the tone.  While this film does have very animated acting, none of it feels out of place or distracting.  The characters are all named after exactly what they are.  There’s the Man, his Wife, the Lady from the City, and so on.  Names were absolutely not needed in any way in this film, as it has a rather simplistic yet powerful story.  The Man and his Wife are both from the country, and the Man is spending time with his mistress, the Lady from the City.  The Lady from the City is trying to get the Man to kill his Wife, and the film follows his struggles to do so.  In the end, he ends up not killing his wife, and rejects the Lady from the City, who slinks off to the city shamefully.  This film is an absolute wonder for me, because it’s sort of like looking at a Hollywood time capsule.  A film this simplistic would never be made today in Hollywood, and I think that’s actually for the worse.  Just because a story is simple doesn’t mean that audiences will get bored or disconnected with it.  By the end of the film, I felt bad for the Man, even though he had done some horrible things to his Wife.  The guilt he felt when he thought his wife had died was apparent when he saw her empty bed that was bathed in light, compared to his bed, which was shadowy and almost out of the shot.  This film had some truly breathtaking shots in it (the tram transition scene from country to city comes to mind) and was certainly pushing some of the era’s techniques.  The film also has some interesting deeper meanings to a lot of what happens.  I personally found the idea of not trying to be someone you’re not to be the most interesting one.  As the Man rejects the Lady from the City, he becomes happy once again, because he knows exactly what he needs to be like, and is proud of it even.  Another way to look at the film is also a cautionary tale on those “city-dwellers”.  The nightlife in those times were heavily sexualized, and many people probably see the Lady from the City as a bit of a Devil motif, tempting the Man to come to a darker place.  Overall, I thought this movie was great, and really gave me something to do on these past few cold days.