A less grand hotel

Another movie that's been sitting on my DVR for a while that I've finally gotten around to watching is Hotel Berlin.

The opening credits mention that this is based on a book by Vicki Baum, the Austrian-born writer who wrote Grand Hotel. I knew the famous Greta Garbo version of Grand Hotel had received a remake, but then I remembered the remake was titled Weekend at the Waldorf, which I also happen to have on my DVR and will eventually get around to doing a post on. In any case, both stories have the same basic conceit of having the lives of a bunch of people all come more or less together over the course of a few days at a luxury hotel.

Hotel Berlin, however, is different in that it was filmed around the turn of the year between 1944 and 1945, a time at which it was clear that Germany was going to lose World War II. A man comes into the hotel, and we see that the Gestapo are pursuing a Professor Koenig (Peter Lorre), as they think he has information on the whereabouts of one Martin Richter (Helmut Dantine). Richter was in one of the German concentration camps but escaped. Before the Gestapo can get any information, however, there's another air raid, and everybody has to go to the air raid shelter in the basement. This brings most of the main chracters together, and brings up all of the plots:

Richter is indeed in the hotel, and is given a waiter's uniform to hide his identity. He then provides room service to Lisa Dorn (Andrea King), an actress whose fame gives her a fair bit of pull in dealing with all of the daily hardships of life.
Lisa's boyfriend is General von Dahnwitz (Raymond Massey). Despite his being a general, he's understood for a while that the war is lost. With that in mind, he was part of the plot to kill Hitler in the summer of 1944. He's a wanted man, and hoping to escape Germany to neutral Sweden, even better if he can do so with Lisa. Meanwhile, a soldier on leave, Maj. Kauders (Kurt Kreuger), sees Lisa and falls for her.
Kauders, for his part, is pursued by Tillie (Faye Emerson), who works at the hotel but also provides "information" to the Nazis. She needs a new pair of shoes, and is desperate to get those shoes. As a result, she goes to Lisa's room, which brings her into the Lisa and Richter story line. Some other people from Tillie's past also show up at the hotel.
General von Dahnwitz has a friend, von Stetten (Henry Daniell), who informs him that trying to escape from Germany is hopeless and that he'd be better off taking the honorable way out of committing suicide. What von Dahnwitz doesn't know is that von Stetten is also one of those Nazis who himself is hoping to escape before the Allied victory, albeit for a different reason: he's one of the group that wants to reconstitute the Nazis down in South America.

Hotel Berlin was released to theaters in early March 1945, again before the German surrender, but close enough to the end that the writers were rushing to include topical references. More importantly, we know that the film is going to require that the bad people are going to get what's coming to them, and the good guys are going to have at least an honorable ending if not a happy one.

Hotel Berlin is interesting as a lower-budget version of those ensemble movies that Hollywood liked to make back in those days, only this time with almost no A-list people. (Compare this to Weekend at the Waldorf, which has Ginger Rogers and Lana Turner among others.) It's not exactly a bad movie, but it's a little complicated. Too much so for its own good considering the B-list cast, however. For me, when the stars are much more recognizable, it's easier to separate all the story lines. Andrea King and Faye Emerson in particular are weak links here. Still, Hotel Berlin is definitely worth a watch.