Hotel Berlin (1945)

Interesting movie about the goings-on of various characters at the Hotel Berlin near the end of WWII. Specifically the search for a member of the German underground who has escaped from a concentration camp. Not surprisingly, this is from the author of Grand Hotel. Unlike the film adaptation of Grand Hotel, this one doesn't have an all-star cast but it does have a cast of solid character actors. Raymond Massey and Faye Emerson are standouts but really the whole cast is good. Peter Lorre steals the few scenes he's in. It's a pretty good though not great WWII movie with a unique setting and some frank (for the time) talk about concentration camps and the Holocaust. Also, if you ever wanted to see Alan Hale as a Nazi, here's your chance.

Like "Grand Hotel," "Hotel Berlin" shows the lives of various guests and workers at a hotel at a specific point in time. This point in time is toward the end of the war, when Germany was obviously losing.Raymond Massey plays General Arnim von Dahnwitz, who is given the chance to commit suicide after an attempt on Hitler's life fails. He's in love with an actress, Lisa Dorn (Andrea King), who is a collaborator but, not sure where she's going to end up when the war ends, play both sides. In fact, an escaped prisoner (Helmut Dantine) hides in her room. He realizes he's been allowed to escape to lead the Germans to the underground.Tillie (Faye Emerson), the "hotel hostess" is an informant but plays as many sides as she can to get a new pair of shoes. She was in love with a Jewish man, Max, presumed dead, and his mother comes to her for help getting some pain medicine for her failing husband. It's then that she learns that Max is alive, and her attitude undergoes a change.Peter Lorre has a small role, that of a scientist who was imprisoned and then released (with no explanation for the audience) and has become an alcoholic.This film was released after the war, and it's a little more interesting than many propaganda films in that it shows the state of the German people, and separation from the beliefs of Hitler, even among officers. It's a time of confusion for a falling Germany.The acting is good, particularly from Faye Emerson as Tillie and Raymond Massey as the doomed General.Worth seeing, not your typical propaganda film.

As the war against Nazi Germany is coming to a climax, this 1945 film revolves around several characters at a hotel in Berlin.Despite brief appearances, Peter Lorre and Alan Hale do some very fine dramatic acting, properly the best in their long careers.Andrea King is wonderful as the German actress staying at the hotel. When a concentration camp survivor escapes to the hotel, he meets up with her and is warned that she has strong Nazi sympathies. Her wavering back and forth ultimately does her in.The film tries to bring out that not all Germans are bad people, as written by President Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. Raymond Massey is such a German; although a General in the Germany army, he participated in the assassination plot and when caught, you know what he is told to do. That type of courageous German he is not.

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.