TinsHeadline Touches You

JinRoz For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

JohnHowardReid 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.

bkoganbing Warner Brothers used none of their box office stars in making Hotel Berlin. What they did do is use a whole lot of second line character players who had been playing Nazis throughout the World War II years. The only two who didn't get into this film were Bobby Watson who played Hitler several times and Martin Kosleck who essayed Goebbels perfectly.If this film has a familiar look to it the author of the novel on which this is based is Vicki Baum who wrote MGM's Oscar winning Grand Hotel which covered Germany in the days before the Third Reich. In Grand Hotel the Weimar Republic was crumbling and now in 1943 the Third Reich was crumbling. The book was written in 1943 and Warner Brothers barely got the film out as events were overtaking the story.Some of the most sinister of character players like George Coulouris, Kurt Kreuger, Alan Hale, Raymond Massey, Henry Daniell play various Nazi types. Peter Lorre is a Nobel Prize winning scientist whom the Nazis have broken. Helmut Dantine who played some really nasty Nazis in Mrs. Miniver and Edge Of Darkness is our protagonist/hero in the main plot. He's escaped from a concentration camp, but he's wise to the fact that the SS let him escape so that Dantine could lead them to other underground leaders. Still he has to shake their efforts to keep on his tail. He does do so in the Hotel Berlin where all these folks are staying, but has to get out undetected.Raymond Massey has an interesting role as a Nazi general who got caught up in a plot against Hitler. When Vicki Baum wrote the book the assassination attempt against Hitler by Von Stauffenberg hadn't occurred. But by this time it had. Massey is portrayed as a brutal Prussian type who is no hero, but was looking to save his own skin post war. Now he's playing for time.For all the men in the story, the two main women's roles really dominate Hotel Berlin. Hotel hostess Faye Emerson works as an informer for her survival. She turns out to have a bit more character than supposed in the end.Best in the film though is Andrea King in what might have been her career role as Fraulein Lisa Dorn, celebrated German actress who hobnobs with the high and low of the Third Reich. She's a Nazi through and through, but a realist who just wants out of Germany and will use anyone to achieve her ends be it Massey, Dantine, Major Kurt Kreuger, or any whom she tries to charm.A bit over the top in wartime propaganda, Hotel Berlin holds up very well for today's audience.

zardoz-13 Initially, Germany might seem the last place for a story about the Nazi resistance, but that was the setting for "Hotel Berlin." After the success of the MGM movie "Grand Hotel," Vicki Baum sought to capture the public's interest with another bestseller Hotel Berlin '43, which was a similar tale about life in a hotel. This time the hotel teemed with intrigue in the bomb-shattered German capital. Warner Brother bought Baum's novel and assigned Jo Pagano and Alvah Bessie. Earlier he had co-scripted the Errol Flynn war film "Northern Pursuit." "Hotel Berlin" was director Peter Godfrey's seventh film. He shot it between November 15, 1944, and January 15, 1945. Fearing World War II would end before he could release "Hotel Berlin,"Jack Warner wanted this melodramatic opus completed as quickly as possible. "The Hollywood Reporter" of January 1, 1945, published an article about the frenzy of activity. The Reporter stated, "Continuing production momentum geared to put "Hotel Berlin" in release coincidental with Russian and Allied drives on German capital, Jack Warner has alerted all departments of the studio with objective of giving the Vicki Baum story a Broadway opening within a month."Scenarists Jo Pagano and Alvah Bessie made several important changes to Baum's novel. First, the bestseller contained an English character under house arrest who broadcasts propaganda to Great Britain. In addition, he needs medical attention requiring the use of morphine. Warner Brothers eliminated this character. Second, the movie changed the background of resistance protagonist Martin Richter, a former Nazi enlisted man who runs an anti-Nazi underground movement, to that a Jewish man who has escaped from a concentration camp and works with an anti-Nazi resistance group. They also shortened the span of the action from several days to a 24-hour period in the elite Hotel Berlin. During the 24-hour period, Martin Richter (Helmet Dantine of "Northern Pursuit") is a Jew who has escaped from a Nazi concentration camp. Richter hides in the hotel elevator shaft, later obtains a waiter's uniform, and circulates throughout the hotel. The famous German stage actress, Lisa Dorn (Andrea King of "Mr. Skeffington") tries to extricate herself from a bad situation by rescinding her Nazi beliefs and helping Richter until she discovers a way of out her problems with the Nazis by informing on Richter. A hotel waiter who is a member of the underground informs his compatriots and Richter reluctantly kills Lisa. Gestapo Commissioner Joachim Helm (George Coulouris of "Citizen Kane") discovers Richter in Lisa Dorn's room. Richter and Helm get into a fistfight; Richter strangles Helm, and drops his body into the elevator shaft. A blond hotel hostess, Tilli, (Faye Emerson of "Lady Gangster") yearns for a new pair of shoes. She is prepared to do whatever it takes to acquire them. She has an on-again and off-again affair with an arrogant Luftwaffe pilot, and simultaneously struggles to get a pair of shoes from another German officer. He finds himself in trouble with the Fatherland because he has too much money invested outside of Germany, and he refuses to bring it home. General Dahnwitz (Raymond Massey of "Desperate Journey"), an arrogant Nazi who participated in a plot to kill Hitler, learns he must commit suicide or suffer a worse fate from the Gestapo. Dahnwitz delays his suicide until Gestapo officers arrive and stand guard outside his room.The Production Code Administration warned Warner Brothers "with regard to the suicide of General Dahnwitz, it is important that it not in any way be glorified, or justified, but played practically as an execution ordered by the Gestapo." Joseph Breen reminded the filmmakers that the suicide must be an order. "To get away from any flavor of glorifying suicide," the chief PCA censor also told the studio to omit a line of Dahnwitz's dialogue in which he said, "And a bullet is a much more elegant way out than a stomach cancer or a prostate operation." Breen reminded the filmmakers not to show Lisa undressing any farther than her skirt and that they not expose Lisa's person when she bathes. The studio obliged Breen and simply deleted the undressing scenes. Breen demanded that Tilli never be filmed in a kimono, which the PCA considered the visual equivalent of sexual immorality. He also wanted the filmmakers to play out intimate scenes in sitting rooms rather than bedrooms.With one exception, Warner Brothers eliminated the scenes showing a bed. The studio, however, must have hashed out an agreement with the PCA because Tilli and the Nazi Major are shown in her bedroom fully dressed but never in bed together. Breen also wanted Warner Brothers to explain where Martin Richter spent the night in Lisa's room. The studio removed this scene. The only time that Richter spends anywhere overnight is in the shaft of the out-of-order elevator.After having read the incomplete revised Hotel Berlin script of August 29, 1944, Breen reminded Warner Brothers about General Dahnwitz's suicide and the problems it could pose which Breen had addressed before. They wanted nobody left in doubt about the reason for Dahnwitz's suicide and stressed that he must be ordered to die. Warner Brothers accommodated Breen on this point. In another storyline ultimately deleted from the script, Breen told the studio that it could not talk about supplying morphine to a dope addict. Not only was the reference to morphine removed, but also the studio deleted the character. Breen also warned the filmmakers about characterizing Tilli as a hotel prostitute."Hotel Berlin" bristles with intrigue, but this wartime film is totally forgettable today. The lack of charismatic actors and actresses and the shortage of cool violence make the film seem almost boring by comparison to better Warner Brothers features. Mind you, the performances are top-rate and Peter Godrey's direction is crisp and efficient. War movie buffs will appreciate this more than the typical viewer unless "Hotel Berlin" is a late night treat for an insomniac.

Bobby-27 Great movie! Andrea King and Faye Emerson fabulous and talented. Very entertaining and historic.