Grand Hotel became history's strangest Best Picture winner 90 years ago. galaxyleila looks back at the movie that won the top Oscar while receiving no other nominations - and how it helped invent the modern star-studded ensemble film
leaves us with. The 1932 MGM film won Best Picture at the fifth Academy Awards and since then has found itself nestled into pseudo-obscurity. An ensemble cast of characters, intersecting stories and then a swift end. The film’s most notable aspect is its one strange honor: Being the only Best Picture winner to not be nominated in any other category. The film came, the film went and no fuss was ever made. But 90 years after its Best Picture win, it’s timebroke open how a film can work.
Once the technological spectacle of filmmaking passed, stars were the next aspect of movies the public latched onto. As early as 1909, there were calls to know more about the actors seen on the screen. Richard deCordova“the emergence of the star system can… best be seen as the emergence of knowledge.” People relied on their knowledge of who these performers were, and the exact types of characters they embodied.
, an exhibition of its best performers, and a decisive message that the studio would embrace sound by relying on their brightest stars. Plotless musical revues came into fashion with the advent of sound, spawning such franchises as thewas notable in its sheer star power—MGM was going to use its biggest asset to its advantage.’s cast was in 1932. The year the film was released, Greta Garbo was the highest paid talent in Hollywood.
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