# Grand Hotel (film)

Grand Hotel is a 1932 film about a group of very different individuals staying at a luxurious hotel in Berlin who deal with each of their respective dramas. The film won the Academy Award for Best Picture.
    Directed by Edmund Goulding. Written by William A. Drake and Béla Balázs, based on the play by William A. Drake and the novel Menschen im Hotel by Vicki Baum.

## Dr. Otternschlag

* What do you do in the Grand Hotel? Eat. Sleep. Loaf around. Flirt a little. Dance a little. A hundred doors leading to one hall, and no one knows anything about the person next to them. And when you leave, someone occupies your room, lies in your bed, and that's the end.
* When a man's collar is an inch too big for him I know he's ill.
* Believe me, Mr. Kringelein, a man who is not with a woman is a dead man.
* The Grand Hotel. Always the same. People come. People go...nothing ever happens.

## Grusinskaya

* I think Suzette, I've never been so tired in all my life..
* Then we’ll go to Tremezzo. I have a villa there. The sun will shine! […] We’ll be happy and lazy. […] It will be divine ! Divine ! Divine !

## Otto Kringelein

* To life! To the magnificent, dangerous, brief, brief, wonderful life...and the courage to live it! You know, Baron, I've only lived since last night, but that little while seems longer than all the time that's gone before.

## Flaemmchen

* [to Preysing, after he tries to get 'familiar' with her by asking her to call him by his first name] You know I always say that nothing should be left hanging over. And names are like that. Suppose I met you next year and said, 'How do you do Mr. Preysing?' And you said, 'That's the young lady who was my secretary in Manchester.' That's all quite proper. But supposing I saw you and yelled 'Hi baby. Remember Manchester.' [he laughs] Yeah, and you were with your wife. How would you like that?

## Preysing

* I don't know much about women. I've been married for 28 years, you know.

## Dialogue

    Baron: Oh, you're a little stenographess?
    Flaemmchen: Yes, I'm a little stenographess.
    Baron: Fascinating. I don't suppose you'd, uh, take some dictation from me sometime, would you?
    Grusinskaya: Who are you?
    Baron: Someone who could love you, that's all. Someone who's forgotten everything else but you.
    Grusinskaya: You could love me?
    Baron: I've never seen anything in my life as beautiful as you are.
    Grusinskaya: Can you imagine a hundred girls in the ballet school, each thinking she would become the most famous dancer in all the world? I was ambitious then. We were drilled like little soldiers. No rest, no stopping. I was little, slim, but hard as a diamond. Then I became famous and - But why am I telling you all this? Last night, I didn't know you at all. Who are you, really?
    Baron: What?
    Grusinskaya: I don't even know your name.
    Baron: [laughs] I am Felix Benvenuto Freihern von Geigern. My mother called me "Flix".
    Grusinskaya: [joyously] No! Flix! Oh, that's sweet. And how do you live? And what kind of a person are you?
    Baron: I'm a prodigal son, the black sheep of a white flock. I shall die on the gallows.
    Baron: You're so beautiful. It tore my heart to see you in despair like that...Please don't cry any more...I'd no idea you were so beautiful. I'd like to take you in my arms, and not let anything happen to you, ever...I've never seen anything in my life as beautiful as you are....
    Grusinskaya: [getting up] You must go now.
    Baron: I'm not going. You know I'm not going. Oh, please let me stay.
    Grusinskaya: But I want to be alone.
    Baron: That isn't true. You don't want to be alone. You were in despair just now. I can't leave you now. You, you musn't cry any more. You must forget. Let me stay just for a little while. Ah, please let me stay.
    Grusinskaya: For just a minute, then.
   * Bolded portion is ranked #30 in the American Film Institute's list of the top 100 movie quotations in American cinema.
    Otto Kringelein: Mr. Preysing, I am not taking orders from you here.
    Preysing: What is this insolence? Please go away.
    Kringelein: You think you have free license to be insulting? Believe me, you have not. You think you're superior, but you're quite an ordinary man. Even if you did marry money, and people like me have got to slave for you for 320 marks a month!
    Preysing: Will you go away, please! You are annoying!
    Flaemmchen: Mr. Preysing, please!
    Kringelein: You don't like to see me enjoying myself. When a man's working himself to death, that's what he's paid for. You don't care if a man can live on his wages or not.
    Preysing: You have a very regular scale of wages, and there's the sick fund for you.
    Kringelein: [sarcastically] Oh, what a scale, and what a fund. When I was sick for four weeks, you wrote me a letter, telling me I'd be discharged if I was sick any longer. Did you write me that letter, or did you not?
    Preysing: I have no idea of the letters that I write, Mr. Kringelein. I know that you're here in the Grand Hotel, living like a lord. You are probably an embezzler.
    Kringelein: [shocked] An embezzler?
    Preysing: Yes, an embezzler!
    Kringelein: You will take that back, right here in the presence of this young lady! Who do you think you're talking to? You think I'm dirt? Well, if I'm dirt, you're a lot dirtier, Mr. Industrial Magnate Preysing!
    Preysing: You're discharged! Get out!
    Flaemmchen: You can't do that to him...
    Preysing: Oh, I don't know the man. I don't know what he wants. I never saw him before.
    Kringelein: I know you! I've kept your books for you and I know all about you! If one of your employees was half as stupid in a small way as you are in a big way...
    Preysing: [lunges for Kringelein] What do you mean? [tries to strangle him. When several people try to break them up, he finally lets go] You're discharged! You're discharged, you hear?
    Kringelein: Wait! You can't discharge me. I am my own master for the first time in my life. You can't discharge me. I'm sick. I'm going to die, you understand? I'm going to die, and nobody can do anything to me anymore. Nothing can happen to me anymore. Before I can be discharged, I'll be dead! [laughs proudly]
    Baron: [looking down from the sixth-floor balcony over the front desk] You know, I've often wondered what'd happen to that old porter if somebody jumped on him from here.
    Flaemmchen: I'm sure I don't know. Why don't you try it and find out?

## Cast

* Greta Garbo - Grusinskaya, the dancer
* John Barrymore - the Baron Felix von Gaigern
* Joan Crawford - Flaemmchen, the stenographer
* Wallace Beery - General Director Preysing
* Lionel Barrymore - Otto Kringelein
* Lewis Stone - Dr Otternschlag
* Jean Hersholt - Senf, the porter
* Robert McWade - Meierheim
* Purnell Pratt - Zinnowitz
* Ferdinand Gottschalk - Pimenov
* Rafaela Ottiano - Suzette
* Morgan Wallace - the chauffeur
* Tully Marshall - Gerstenkorn
* Frank Conroy - Rohna
* Murray Kinnell - Schweimann
* Edwin Maxwell - Dr Waitz

## External links

* Grand Hotel quotes at the Internet Movie Database
* Grand Hotel at Rotten Tomatoes
* Grand Hotel at Filmsite.org