Stometer
Save your money for something good and enjoyable
Claysaba
Excellent, Without a doubt!!
TaryBiggBall
It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.
jacksflicks
Supposedly this movie was popular at the box office. I guess people were eager to see a timely dramatization, such as it was, of the defeat of Germany played as an ersatz Grand Hotel. But the story is so sloppily put together, with so many gaffs, so much broken continuity, and scenes that lead to nowhere, that I wonder wonder what so many reviewers giving good scores are smoking.Here are just a few examples: In one scene Fay Emerson introduces Helmut Dantine, in an SS major's uniform, as Major, then she and others call him, still with his major's pips, Captain. The bombers practically wreck the air raid shelter, but leave the hotel above it untouched. Alan Hale, as a Nazi official, is disposed of, as a suspect in an SS officer's killing -- completely out of the blue (he's innocent and not connected in any way) -- because, well, his character needs disposing of. Emerson and Dantine are strangers one moment and intimate lovers the next, with no exposition. Peter Lorre does his stock "drunk and dissolute" scene and then is suddenly neat, spiffy and sober. Andrea King's Lisa Dorn gives up Dantine to the SS, for coffee, but it's Emerson who gets shot. (Well, this is a Faye Emerson vehicle.) There's also a lame reprise of Lewis Stone's "doctor waiting for a message" in Grand Hotel.Raymond Massey has a great part, as a doomed general, and the other actors do their stuff well, but none are allowed to develop their characters. It's really too bad their efforts, and a potentially interesting story, are wasted on incompetent direction and slapdash editing.
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.
whpratt1
During the World War II years, you would always see many of these actors in this type of war film appearing as Nazi's, namely, Henry Daniell(Von Stetten),"The Body Snatcher",'45, starring Boris Karloff. Even Raymond Massey (Arnim von Dahnwitz),"Arsenic & Old Lace",'44, was a Nazi who was in love with Faye Emerson,(Tillie Weiler),"Nobody Lives Forever",'46, who played a sexy blond charmer that managed to play with both sides, the Naxi's, Polish(Jews) and French. Peter Lorre,(Johannes Koenig),"The Beast With Five Fingers",'46, played an entirely different role as a Professor, who seemed to drink most of the time, but did hate the Nazi's and their cause and managed to do his best making false ID papers and passports. Praise of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill and even Joe Stalin is mentioned during the picture. It just so happens that Faye Emerson, was once married to Elliott Roosevelt in real life and also Skitch Henderson, a famous band leader. You cannot take this film too serious, however, it did tell us about a horrible war and and Devil called Hitler.
John
Entertaining melodrama that revolves around an upscale hotel as the Nazi regime is tumbling down and the rats are deserting the sinking ship. What makes this film so much above the other anti Nazi propaganda films of it's time is that the whole Jewish prejudice issue is actually dealt with, (can only think of one other film in the WW2 era that even mentions it---The Mortal Storm (1940) another 4 star movie). Even has one character having to wear the yellow star on her chest. Another exploding in a bomb shelter at the Nazi who tormented her Jewish lover to death because she was a gentile in love with a Jew. I was never bored in this movie as plots and subplots are unravelled. Warners B roster of character actors including Raymond Massey, Peter Lorre, Andrea King, Alan Hale, Philip Dorn, Faye Emerson (who steals the movie as the hotel prostitute)and all the rest are very good. Never released on VHS or DVD. Wish it was. Forgotten film but was brought up in McCarthy Witch Hunt trials of 1950's getting the writer into trouble and some jail time. Recommend this film highly.
