Grand Hotel, 1931

Director: Edmund Goulding
Studio:  MGM
Winner Best Picture Academy Awards
Starring Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Lionel Barrymore, Wallace Beery
IMDB Link:  Grand Hotel

Per SEZ: Sure this is a famous movie--and it certainly is well worth watching if you are a film-history buff, but let's be honest, the story is absurd: esp the Barrymore/Garbo relationship. Garbo's acting is over the top melodrama. Yes, she says "I vant to be alone" but that is a pretty mild thrill. Barrymore, Crawford and Beery hold their own with the characters they had to play. But what is the sum of the coming together of these characters? The story says: Aristocrats are kinder to the working class than the bourgeois  (aristocrats are real gentlemen..so I guess common folks would rather be serfs and servants than wage workers.)  The aristocrats are on the decline and the evil industrialists (at least the German variety) are dishonest. A nice 'working girl' may have to sell 'her favors' to get by -- but a real man would rather risk his life (and die) than to accept financial help from a woman who has plenty of $$, who loves him and who is willing to help him. There is more--but it all adds up to a story without any worthwhile point...but then there are some pretty fabulous costumes--and that may be enough reason alone to take a look at this ever so famous but ever so silly movie.