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The online film magazine Combustible Celluloid offers new movie reviews, DVD reviews, film reviews, actor interviews, actress interviews, director interviews, film books and all things cinema related for the thoughtful and passionate. Online for ten years! Over 3000 reviews!

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Grand Hotel (1932)

Rating: 3 1/2 Stars (out of 4)

Checking In

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Buy Grand Hotel on DVD

Grand Hotel was the first Garbo film I ever saw, and she enchanted me effortlessly, despite the presence of the rest of the powerful ensemble cast. The film won the Oscar for Best Picture. Warner Home Video, which holds the rights to all the old MGM stuff, has released a truly spectacular DVD box set, Garbo: The Signature Collection, certainly one of the all-time greats. It includes no less than ten Greta Garbo films, plus both English and German-language versions of Anna Christie (1930). Other films include: The Temptress (1926), Flesh and the Devil (1927), The Mysterious Lady (1928), Mata Hari (1931), Grand Hotel (1932), Queen Christina (1933), Anna Kareninna (1935), Camille (1936) and Ninotchka (1939), plus a new Turner Classic Movies documentary Garbo. Other extras include a snippet from the lost film The Divine Woman, an alternate ending for The Temptress, audio commentary tracks on selected films, a featurette about composing the new scores for the silent films, a photo gallery and a trailer.

Starring: Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery, Lionel Barrymore, Lewis Stone, Jean Hersholt
Written by: Béla Balázs, based on a play by Vicki Baum, (translated by William A. Drake)
Directed by: Edmund Goulding
MPAA Rating: Unrated
Running Time: 112 minutes
Date: September 5, 2006