'Grand Hotel' - Where Nothing Ever Happens Quiz

Answer: Berlin

A number of characters make reference to the city where they are staying, and the German names of most of the characters might also have suggested Berlin to you. The screenplay for this movie was based on a 1930 stage adaptation (by the same author, William A. Drake) of Vicki Baum's 1929 novel 'Menschen im Hotel'.

The literal translation of this would be 'People in a Hotel', but the English publication used the title 'Grand Hotel'. This movie has sometimes been referred to as the first portmanteau movie, meaning one in which multiple stories are intertwined.

The opening scene of 'Grand Hotel' starts with a shot of busy telephone receptionists, before changing to some close-ups of the people who are using the hotel phones, giving us a very early idea of the complex structure of the interactions we are going to see.

Answer: A grenade exploded near his face, causing disfigurement.

The right side of the doctor's face is covered in scar tissue, as we see several times. The doctor, played by Lewis Stone, seems to pay little attention to what is going on around him, as he remarks at the start of the film, "People coming, going. Nothing ever happens." While this may well be true most of the time, he repeats the sentiment again at the end of the film, after we have seen a number of dramatic events, saying, "Grand Hotel. Always the same. People come. People go. Nothing ever happens." Maybe he's talking about himself in the scene in the Yellow Room of the hotel in which he tells Otto Kringelein, "And 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. No one knows anything about the person next to them. And when you leave, someone occupies your room, lies in your bed... that's the end." We, however, find out quite a bit about what is going on behind those doors!

Answer: It is too small.

Poor Kringelein (played by Lionel Barrymore) has been diagnosed with a terminal illness, and wants to splash out. The desk clerk has clearly judged that he was not of the same social class as the majority of the hotel's clientele - perhaps it was the rumpled and ill-fitting suit that gave him away. Kringelein insists that a bookkeeper's money is as good as anyone else's, and he is prepared to pay for a really good room.

He gets his way, and also captures the attention of the Baron, who advises him to get a better suit as a way of starting his residence at the Grand Hotel.

Answer: He is trying to organise a corporate merger.

Preysing (played by Wallace Beery) is desperately trying to organise a corporate merger that will keep his company from collapsing. (Kringelein clearly got out in the nick of time!) This merger apparently hinges on some deal with a manufacturer in Manchester, which we discover early on has definitely fallen through.

He tries to bluff his way through the merger anyway, and actually tells everyone that the Manchester deal is sealed. This leads to him needing to plan a trip to England so that he can try and fix things up.

Although this is going to be a business trip, he tries to add a bit of fun by inviting the stenographer the hotel has provided for his use to accompany him. And so the plot thickens.

Answer: He is doing exercises with a towel around his waist.

Because he is half-dressed, he sends the new stenographer (a young lady known as Flaemmchen, played by Joan Crawford) to wait outside in the hall. This gives her a chance to meet the Baron (who is beginning to seem like the linking thread for the various stories). They flirt, and make a date for dinner the following evening.

Once Flaemmchen starts taking dictation from Preysing, it becomes clear that her physical attractions are at least as important to him as her secretarial skills. Their conversation establishes that she is the kind of woman who takes holidays with friends who pay for them, leading him to ask her (later in the film) to accompany him on his trip to England. On her part this is clearly a business transaction - she negotiates for the payment of a substantial sum of money so that she can trick herself out appropriately, and he rents her the room adjoining his own, where she is to spend the night before they leave.

Answer: The pearls belonging to a famous Russian ballet dancer.

This instruction about the robbery is the first we hear of Grusinskaya (played by Greta Garbo), who is staying in the hotel as part of a European tour. Her career is on the downward side of success, and she is not having a successful tour, so much so that she almost has to be forced to go to the theatre. While she is out, the Baron (played by John Barrymore) enters her room via the balcony and grabs her pearls. As he tries to leave the way he came in, he finds that Preysing is on the balcony, and he cannot go out that way. Just then the maid enters to clean the room, followed by the housekeeper who berates the maid for being so late before answering the ringing telephone to say that Grusinskaya is not there. We discover that it is the theatre calling - she never arrived for her performance, and everyone is concerned.

The casting of Greta Garbo, who had a strong Swedish accent, to play the part of a character who was repeatedly described as Russian, was considered controversial in some circles. Possibly the producers thought that audiences wouldn't distinguish one European accent from another, as it would not have been all that difficult to make her a Swedish dancer!

Answer: True

Although Greta Garbo has stated that her actual line was "I want to be let alone", and seemed to think the distinction was significant, there must have been some editing done between filming and the final cut; the line that you hear in the movie is indeed the one that will be forever associated with her. Immediately after, she says "I just want to be alone." When everyone leaves (except the Baron, who is still in hiding), she calls the theatre, and discovers that the show went on without her. This leads to a despairing soliloquy, which induces the Baron to emerge and tell her how much he admires her.

When she asks what he is doing in her room, he tells her that he often comes there when she is out, to bask in the atmosphere of her being. During the course of the ensuing conversation, she once again says, "And I want to be alone," to which he replies by reminding her that she had just told him, as he was convincing her that life was worth living, "I was so alone, suddenly you were there." He declares his love for her (!), and she lets him stay.

Answer: Flix

He tells her that his full name is Felix Benvenuto Freihern von Geigern, and she makes a face at the complexity of the name. When he tells her that his mother called him Flix, she says that's sweet. As they continue to get to know each other, she asks him how he makes a living.

After a bit of stalling, her tells her he is a gambler and a hotel thief, and returns her pearls. She is angry, but then succumbs to his earnest protestations that he loves her and invites him to go to Vienna with her, as she excitedly plans for her rejuvenated career.

Answer: Kringelein

The doctor is in the party, along with the Baron, and they watch Kringelein have an amazing streak of luck, which leads to him ending up with 14,000 marks. (To put this into perspective, the money which the Baron owes, which appears to be quite significant, is 5000 marks; the amount Preysling offers Flaemmchen to accompany him to England is 1000 marks.) He also ends up quite drunk, and loses the pocketbook (a term used in the movie to refer to what I would call a wallet) in which he has placed his winnings. The baron pockets it, but then, when he sees how distressed Kringerlein is about the loss, returns it. He still needs to find that money! On his way out, he meets up with Flaemmchen, on her way into the room that Preysling has organised for her use.

At the end of the game, as the losers are getting ready to leave, Kringerlein tries to convince them to stay and party on. He expresses here what he feels he has learned during the film: "For the first time in my life I've gambled and I've danced. Oh, you gentlemen can laugh, but for the first time in my life I've tasted life. Life is wonderful, but it's very dangerous. If you have the courage to live it, it's marvellous. ... If a man doesn't know death, he doesn't know life."

Answer: Preysling bludgeons the Baron to death.

Outraged, Preysling refuses to let the Baron simply return the money and look elsewhere for the funds he needs, and starts to call the police, but then they scuffle, and Preysling hits the Baron with the phone in his hand, killing him. Flaemmchen fetches Kringerlein, who refuses to cooperate with Preysling's plan to cover it all up, saying that you don't kill a man about a pocketbook.

While we wait for the police to arrive and arrest Preysing, we watch Grusinskaya being rushed off to the train station while being kept in the dark about the Baron's death.

She has had a couple of momentary premonitions that all is not well, but it is still going to be devastating to find herself on the train without him. Kringerlein and Flaemmchen share their mutual love for the Baron, and he offers to take care of her for the time he has left; she orders two tickets to Paris.

As they leave the hotel, a young (apparently newlywed) couple arrive, and the porter finds out that his wife (who, as we learned in the opening telephone conversations, has been in labour since the start of things) has finally delivered a baby girl, after he has spent two sleepless nights at the hospital. (Nobody seems to consider what his wife has been through.)