A cast of Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery and John and Lionel Barrymore together in one film would appear justification enough - but Grand Hotel has much more to recommend it than its luminous residents, and even contemporary critics hailed it as a masterpiece of craftsmanship in which director Edmund Goulding created an atmosphere at once intensely realistic and allegorical. The claustrophobic picture of European grandeur in its last, pre-Fascist gasps is only enhanced by the choice of actors: Greta Garbo as a world-weary prima donna; Joan Crawford, whose performance as a sensuous stenographer with a cold eye on Wallace Beery's pocketbook won her more kudos than Garbo and was a turning point in her career; Lionel Barrymore as a bookkeeper exploring the potentials of his terminal illness, and John Barrymore as the roguish Baron who lightens Garbo's load for a brief moment. Love, greed, death, cynicism - not in that order but intermingling freely within the rooms of the Grand Hotel, Berlin.