Diagonaldi Very well executed

ThiefHott Too much of everything

Stoutor It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

Frances Chung Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

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.

MartinHafer Most of the wartime pictures made in the US portray the Nazis as complete sadists...almost demonic. While there are bits of that in this film, the way they portray the Nazis in the final weeks of the war is a bit more multidimensional.In some ways, the film plays like a Nazified version of Grand Hotel- -with this Berlin hotel being a way to tie together the various stories in the picture. There are evil Nazis, not quite so evil Nazis, Germans not in the military that hate the Nazis and Germans who are just hoping to survive. As for the really terrible Nazis, some of the better actors who specialize in portraying evil characters are here...such as George Coulouris, Henry Danielle and Raymond Massey. The stories are engaging and the picture manages to show a reasonably accurate picture of Germany in the final days...which is amazing since the film came out only weeks before the war ended in Europe. Well made and its only fault is that, at times, the film seems overly long and a bit of editing would have helped the tempo.By the way, some of the anti-Nazis in the film were portrayed by folks who actually DID escape from Nazi Europe, such as Frank Reicher, Peter Lorre and Helmut Dantine.

cdunbar-3 This war film offers a unique slant on the German political/social climate during early 1945. Because it was conceived without the benefit of hindsight it's that much more interesting to view 60 years later. While the story is necessarily compacted to allow for the drama of various characters to be inserted, there is a solid story at the core. Good performances...Raymond Massey was particularly fine in a relatively low key role while Peter Lorre plays a repentant Nazi with equal effectiveness. The female leads here are also great, especially Faye Emerson as the hotel "hostess." There are some dated elements of propaganda (a painting of Hitler hanging in hotel lobby prompts one guest to comment "I'd like to see him hanging another way") All the same this film offers thoughtful character studies of human beings at their best and worst while under duress. Some plot loopholes exist but they do not greatly detract from story; the brisk pace holds viewer attention from beginning to end. A worthwhile way to spend an hour and a bit.

sol ***SPOILERS*** The movie "Hotel Berlin" was Made in early 1945 and released on March 2nd of that year exactly two months before Berlin fell to the Red Army on May 2, 1945. The film is about the fearful and chaotic times in that great German capital in early 1945 when it was under attack from the air by the USAAF and RAF and at the same time as the Red Army was closing in on it from the east. It was then that the Soviet Union assembled it's divisions for it's massive 1,000,000 man armored and infantry assault that it launched on April 16, 1945 to put the final nail on the coffin of Nazi Germany. Inside the Hotel Berlin are a number of anti-Nazi German resistance fighters led by Martin Richter, Helmut Dantine, who just escaped from a German concentration camp. Richter is now planing to start a revolt against Hitler's Germany in order to help put an end to the war before the vengeful and murderous Red Army captures the city. Richter is also being helped by the former German newspaper publisher Walter Baumier, Wolfgang Zilzer, and his young son, Richard Tyler, who's a bellhop at the hotel. There's also Richter's science professor who taught him at the University of Leipzig Prof. Johannes Koenig, Peter Lorre, who until the final few minutes seemed to be dead drunk during the entire film. Richter is given cover from being captured by the Gestapo headed by the hotel's security chief Gestapo Commissioner Joachim Helm, George Coulouris, by top German actress Lisa Dorn, Andrea King. Lisa is really a loyal Nazi and is i fact setting him up to be captured by the Gestapo. There's also General Von Dahnwitz, Raymond Massy, who was called back to Berlin from the front and is also Lisa's lover. Gen. Von Dahnwitz doesn't know that he's to be arrested for trying to overthrow the Hitler regime after he was ratted out by one of his officers who he trusted. Other stories at the hotel is about the hotel hostess Tillie Weller, Fay Emerson, and Nazi big shot Herman Plottke, Alan Hale. Plottke is trying to skip out of the country with all the money he looted from the German treasury that amounted to four million Marks. There's also Nazi big wig Von Stetten, Henry Daniell, who's also trying to get out of Germany via a U-Boat. Stetten is planing to start up a new Nazi movement after the fall of the Third Reich in North America! And last but not least there's Sara Baruch the mother of Tillie's Jewish boyfriend Max who was arrested and sent to a concentration camp but unknown to Tillie Max was just liberated by the US army. Mrs Baruch wants Tillie to get her medication for her sick and dying husband to relive the pain that he's suffering from terminal cancer. Tillie is shocked to find that her lover Max is alive since thinking that he was dead she became an informer for the Nazi's at the hotel besides being the hotel hostess.The movie ends with both Gestapo Commissioner Helm and pro-Nazi and double-crossing Lisa Dorn getting their just deserts from none other the the person who they tried to do in heroic German freedom fighter Martin Richter. General Von Dahnwitz end up killing himself, with a bullet to the head to avoid being tortured and murdered by the Gestapo. Van Stetten's U-Boat is captured by the allies and with that his ticket to freedom and dreams of starting up a new Nazi Germany going down the drain together with him. Prof.Koenig finally stops drinking and sobers up enough to join the anti-Nazi resistance movement. The greedy and arrogant Herman Plottke gets arrested by the Gestapo for Commissioners Helm's murder which he was innocent of! Still he got what he deserved for the other rotten things that he did in the movie. The Film "Hotel Berlin" ends with Richter and his band of resistance fighters in the hotel including a number of downed US Army Air Force bomber pilots, where did they come from?, escaping to freedom. "Hotel Berlin" is a well acted and directed film that doesn't hit you so hard over the head with the propaganda that your use to seeing in most Hollywood WWII movies. This may be because when it was made the war against Germany was just about over and there was no reason to go overboard with the anti-German propaganda in it. Among other pluses in the movie "Hotel Berlin" is that there were also a few good Germans in it.