“ GRAND HOTEL.”

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 660, 13 January 1933, Page 3

“ GRAND HOTEL.”

The preferential box plan for the outstanding film “ Grand Hotel ", which will begin a season on Saturday week, is rapidly filling at the Regent Theatre. “ Grand Hotel ” is a distinct triumph of the talkies. The completed product, viewed as a whole, is logger than its amazing cast, story, directorial effort and production. It is easily the most artistic and worthy offering the screen has known since the advent of talking pictures, if not of the silent days. If only for the cast, boasting such stars as Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery, Lionel Barrymore, Lewis Stone and Joan Hersholt, the film version of the famous Vicki Baum play would have much to commend it as an outstanding picture. But, in addition to the magnificent characterisations, it has the superb mounting of imposing sets, splendid photography and admirable direction by Edmund Goulding. Goulding missed nothing in his desire to bring •* Grand Hotel ” to the screen as a vividly symbolic human document. The film version cannot be called a mere copy of the stage play. it is vastly more than that; in fact, it is a combination of the original novel and the best that the theatre piece contained. It moves swiftly and permits an unlimited scope of action, yet it never goes outside the hotel in which the entire story is unfolded. No one can afford to miss this great film.