Hotel Berlin
                                                                                                    
Director: Peter Godfrey
Year: 1945
Rating: 7.0
I made two assumptions about this film that turned out to be totally wrong and thankfully that made the film more fascinating. I was expecting the film to be post WW2 with Americans inhabiting the hotel and I thought the film was shot after Germany surrendered in May of 1945. Instead, the film was shot in early 1945 and released in March. The film takes place during the war and all the characters are Germans. The film pauses now and then for people to go into the bomb shelter as air raids are being carried out. Other than that, the feel of the film and multiple intersecting stories and characters reminded me of the classic 1932 film, The Grand Hotel with that stellar cast. It turns out that this is no co-incidence because both films are based on the novels of Vicki Baum - Grand Hotel on a novel published in 1929 and this one on a novel published in 1943. Baum was an Austrian who wrote over fifty books in her life - and when Hollywood decided to take her novel for The Grand Hotel, she went over to help on the script and never went back. Being Jewish this turned out to be a wise decision. All of her books were banned under the Nazis.



It is really quite an interesting film under the circumstances though at the time it was released it came under some criticism for portraying some of the Germans as decent people. But certainly not most. Peter Lorre's character who had been in Dachau at one point explodes in anger when a man from the underground resistance tells him that when the war is over the good Germans will again run the country - "Good Germans? Yes, we are great scientists. We have managed to kill 6,000 people a day in the concentration camps. What good Germans? There are no good Germans. Find me ten good Germans. You can't. This is our punishment. This is what we deserve.". At the time of the film, the concentration camps were still generally unknown.



The hotel is filled with German military on break, SS looking for people on a list to be executed, those that know the war is lost but are afraid to say anything, hotel staff that are part of the underground and others who are calculating their own survival when the Americans arrive. The primary driver of the plot is an underground agent who is trapped in the hotel with the Gestapo searching for him. He is played by Helmut Dantine, an Austrian who was actually sent to a concentration camp in 1939 for anti-Nazi activities but was released because of his family's influence. He immediately flew to England. He had to spend most of the war years having to play Nazis, so this was a nice change for him.



Raymond Massey plays a German General who has been given 24-hours to kill himself in the hotel. He was part of a plot to kill Hitler. He is in love with a German actress (Andrea King) who has been a supporter of Hitler but now finds her friendship with the General to be a potential danger. Lorre is a scientist who was able to get out of Dachau because some Germans are planning to go to America by submarine to set up a Nazi party to come back someday. I think they were going to call it America First. This plan is led by Henry Daniell. Another player is the hotel Hostess - which is a polite way of putting comfort lady. She had been engaged to a Jew and this was her only option not to be sent to a camp. She is played by Faye Emerson who was married at the time to FDR's son Elliott. Other actors who weave in and out are Alan Hale as a corrupt Nazi, Stephen Geray as the Front Desk manager, Frank Reicher as the underground hotel staff and other familiar faces. A lot of Germans in the cast having to play SS troops.  A good suspenseful film that seems like a real oddity to be shot by Warners at the time.