Hotel Berlin (1945)

Some things I liked some I did not.

one of my absolute favorites!

Gripping story with well-crafted characters

Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.

Copyright 14 March 1945 by Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc. A Warner Bros.-First National picture. New York opening at the Strand: 2 March 1945. U.S. release: 17 March 1945. U.K. release: 7 May 1945. Australian release: 28 June 1945. Copyright running time: 98 minutes. Australian length: 9,007 feet. 100 minutes.SYNOPSIS: Resistance leader, cornered in a Berlin Hotel, enlists the aid of an actress to help him escape.NOTES: Vicki Baum's Grand Hold (1930) was such a runaway bestseller, she spent the rest of her life (she died in 1960) trying to recapture the extent of that achievement. "You can live down any number of flops," she once admitted, "but you can't live down a success." Early in 1942 she saw Billy Wilder's film Five Graves To Cairo from which she conceived the idea of disguising a spy as a hotel waiter. This then is a Grand Hotel in a last-days-of-Berlin setting. Originally titled "Hotel Berlin '43", it was serialized in Collier's Magazine in late 1943 and published in book form the following year. Alternative film title: BERLIN HOTEL.COMMENT: Concocted by Vicki Baum of Grand Hotel, this is a delightfully flamboyant melodrama, engrossingly acted by a second-string but first-rate cast, stylishly directed by Peter Godfrey who makes the most of Carl Guthrie's fluidly fascinating camerawork and John Hughes' broodingly magnificent sets. Peopled with a nervous array of suspensefully interlocking characters who are at the mercy of times and tides - and air raids - it's impossible to take your attention off the film for a second. I'd hate to miss just one nuance of Henry Daniell's diplomatic double-dealing (one of his largest and most memorable roles), or a single twitch of George Coulouris' cat-and-mousing, or the tiniest spasm of Peter Lorre's despairing eye-rolling ("One good German? Perhaps we'll find him in the closet!"). Every role is perfectly cast - from the major leads (Dantine as the fugitive, Andrea King as the actress sympathizer, Raymond Massey as the general-in-a-trap, Faye Emerson as the hotel "hostess") to the minor supports (Alan Hale as a vengeful Nazi, Dickie Tyler as a harried bellboy), with splendid back-up from deft players like Steve Geray and Frank Reicher.Godfrey keeps the various story strands cracking along at a merry pace. Although conceived in melodramatic terms, the story ideas show a realistic lack of compromise - there is no cop-out conclusion - which makes them far less dated and acceptable to a more cynical modern audience than most other examples of Hollywood's wartime propaganda.

Most of the wartime pictures made in the US portray the Nazis as complete sadists...almost demonic. While there are bits of that in this film, the way they portray the Nazis in the final weeks of the war is a bit more multidimensional.In some ways, the film plays like a Nazified version of Grand Hotel- -with this Berlin hotel being a way to tie together the various stories in the picture. There are evil Nazis, not quite so evil Nazis, Germans not in the military that hate the Nazis and Germans who are just hoping to survive. As for the really terrible Nazis, some of the better actors who specialize in portraying evil characters are here...such as George Coulouris, Henry Danielle and Raymond Massey. The stories are engaging and the picture manages to show a reasonably accurate picture of Germany in the final days...which is amazing since the film came out only weeks before the war ended in Europe. Well made and its only fault is that, at times, the film seems overly long and a bit of editing would have helped the tempo.By the way, some of the anti-Nazis in the film were portrayed by folks who actually DID escape from Nazi Europe, such as Frank Reicher, Peter Lorre and Helmut Dantine.

Supposedly this movie was popular at the box office. I guess people were eager to see a timely dramatization, such as it was, of the defeat of Germany played as an ersatz Grand Hotel. But the story is so sloppily put together, with so many gaffs, so much broken continuity, and scenes that lead to nowhere, that I wonder wonder what so many reviewers giving good scores are smoking.Here are just a few examples: In one scene Fay Emerson introduces Helmut Dantine, in an SS major's uniform, as Major, then she and others call him, still with his major's pips, Captain. The bombers practically wreck the air raid shelter, but leave the hotel above it untouched. Alan Hale, as a Nazi official, is disposed of, as a suspect in an SS officer's killing -- completely out of the blue (he's innocent and not connected in any way) -- because, well, his character needs disposing of. Emerson and Dantine are strangers one moment and intimate lovers the next, with no exposition. Peter Lorre does his stock "drunk and dissolute" scene and then is suddenly neat, spiffy and sober. Andrea King's Lisa Dorn gives up Dantine to the SS, for coffee, but it's Emerson who gets shot. (Well, this is a Faye Emerson vehicle.) There's also a lame reprise of Lewis Stone's "doctor waiting for a message" in Grand Hotel.Raymond Massey has a great part, as a doomed general, and the other actors do their stuff well, but none are allowed to develop their characters. It's really too bad their efforts, and a potentially interesting story, are wasted on incompetent direction and slapdash editing.

As the war against Nazi Germany is coming to a climax, this 1945 film revolves around several characters at a hotel in Berlin.Despite brief appearances, Peter Lorre and Alan Hale do some very fine dramatic acting, properly the best in their long careers.Andrea King is wonderful as the German actress staying at the hotel. When a concentration camp survivor escapes to the hotel, he meets up with her and is warned that she has strong Nazi sympathies. Her wavering back and forth ultimately does her in.The film tries to bring out that not all Germans are bad people, as written by President Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. Raymond Massey is such a German; although a General in the Germany army, he participated in the assassination plot and when caught, you know what he is told to do. That type of courageous German he is not.