Grand Hotel
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In Edmund Goulding's Grand Hotel (1932) the main set, the hotel's lobby, has a circular reception desk at its center. Around the desk Cedric Gibbons designed a bold pattern of alternating black and white squares that resolve into increasingly extended diamonds as the pattern turns into a vortex with the desk as its center. Circular movement around the hub of the desk is the guiding structural principle of the film. This principle literalizes the desk's allegorical standing as the center around which the characters' lives revolve. The film's metaphor of the gigantic urban hotel as a microcosm of life relies on this central point of reference. The Grand Hotel itself is an enclosed world--the scenes are seldom enacted outside it and are always attached its exterior. The building, especially in dramatic process shots of its internal balconies, is essentially a manifestation of the principle of the strong center, the vortex that pulls everything toward it. Those who arrive are sucked into its orbit, those who are trapped there, like the doctor and the baron, revolve endlessly around it, and those who leave must make an effort to stride across the vortex, across its current, to make a straight line for the doors. The hotel sets, though impressive, are quite simple. The film was based on Vicki Baum's German play, which also ran on Broadway (Vermilye 76). The original novel had been an international best-seller and the film retained the German setting and character names.
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al times, is somewhat claustrophobic, showing only the doors and the hotel's name above them.
The subsequent scenes alternate the fifth-floor corridor with the rooms of Beery and John Barrymore. Beery's room continues to be impersonal, even with the lights on, in low-angled shots of Crawford with Beery standing behind her. This lack of unique characteristics is continued later in the conference room where Beery holds his important meeting. Barrymore's room is softly lit and looks inhabited but masculinely empty--in contrast to Garbo's feminized luxury. This also reflects, of course, the difference in their financial positions--but subtly because his is a secret. When Barrymore's room is introduced, the employee's entry is used again. This time, however, the supposed chauffeur is actually a criminal--disguised as a chauffeur as Barrymore is disguised as a person who can afford the hotel.
The next sets that are shown are in the series of shots as John Barrymore passes outside Beery's room and is shown from across the street as he passes over the balconies. In one brief overhead shot he is also shown over the gap between balconies, suspended above a lighted glass canopy at street level. The exterior of the hotel is seen f
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2431
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)
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