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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.

Entertaining war drama with a darker tenor than most studio films at the time. The cast performs well but with the source material being from the author of Grand Hotel and a decent script it's a surprise that the players are more or less B level performers.

That's not a swipe at any of them since they all play their parts well, although a more charismatic actor than Helmut Dantine, someone like James Mason, would have given better focus to the lead character's plight. Andrea King, a good actress with an unusual quality but often stuck in nothing parts, has one of her best roles that she perhaps received because of the character's murky ethics. The audience is never fully sure what side her duplicitous Lisa Dorn is playing for which might have caused bigger stars such as Joan Crawford, Ann Sheridan and Alexis Smith to decline the role.

The supporting cast is stocked with great character actors all getting the most out of their parts. Faye Emerson's role of Tillie, an opportunistic hotel employee, somewhat shadows Joan Crawford's Flaemmchen in Grand Hotel though she's not as sympathetic. She offers a fine interpretation of the role making her moral quandary relatable and touching. Likewise Raymond Massey and Peter Lorre also stand out fleshing out their roles surely more than what was on the page.

Not readily available but well worth seeking out.

Unusual World War II-era drama set in a Berlin hotel during the closing moments of the war. Unusual because this film presents some Germans as good and tries to separate the Nazi regime from the ordinary population who just tried to survive the madness. Very reminiscent of "Grand Hotel" -- not surprising since the author of the novel upon which the screenplay is based is the same Vicki Baum who wrote "Grand Hotel" and "Weekend at the Waldorf." Characters and sub-plots come and go with a central theme of the search for an escaping prisoner and the moral and physical decay of the Nazi regime. Raymond Massey is quite good as General Arnim von Dahnwitz, an old-school officer who participated in the plot against the Corporal and is offered the honorable way out. Peter Lorre has a brief role but why he was released from prison and other transformations must have been left on the cutting room floor. Made during the war and released after its conclusion, this is an excellent example of propaganda. Viewers are conditioned to the punishment (not justice) of the enemy, fifth columns that would have left the dying Germany to carry on the war from within North America, and the need to build a new Germany when all of the chaos ends. Not a light movie, but one that would serve well in a Film and Political Science course. Recommended.

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.

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.

Entertaining melodrama that revolves around an upscale hotel as the Nazi regime is tumbling down and the rats are deserting the sinking ship. What makes this film so much above the other anti Nazi propaganda films of it's time is that the whole Jewish prejudice issue is actually dealt with, (can only think of one other film in the WW2 era that even mentions it---The Mortal Storm (1940) another 4 star movie). Even has one character having to wear the yellow star on her chest. Another exploding in a bomb shelter at the Nazi who tormented her Jewish lover to death because she was a gentile in love with a Jew. I was never bored in this movie as plots and subplots are unravelled. Warners B roster of character actors including Raymond Massey, Peter Lorre, Andrea King, Alan Hale, Philip Dorn, Faye Emerson (who steals the movie as the hotel prostitute)and all the rest are very good. Never released on VHS or DVD. Wish it was. Forgotten film but was brought up in McCarthy Witch Hunt trials of 1950's getting the writer into trouble and some jail time. Recommend this film highly.

Not Without some Interest, this Ultimately Unsatisfying bit of Studio Filmmaking Echoes WWII Propaganda. But at the Time of the Production and the Films Release the Outcome was a Foregone Conclusion so there isn't Much here that is Heavy Handed or Preachy.

In Fact, the Best that has been said about this Forgotten Film is it's Evenhandedness in Portraying the German People as "Not all Evil". The Movie is Mostly a Yawner but it is Kept Awake by the Multitude of Characters and the Movement of the Plot and its Myriad of Interwoven Interactions.

Each One is given a Speech or Two and the Plot Weaves in and out of Patriotic Duty, Blind Obedience, Desperate Survival Tactics, Among the Stock Characters. Nothing Really Seems that Demanding and the Whole Thing comes off as a Stage Play with Stiff B-Actors.

There are a Few Highlights, like Peter Lorre as a Scientific Experimenter that is Suffering from a Guilt Complex and can't seem to Find One Good German. The Other Character that Stands Out is the Hotel Hostess (read Prostitute) Played with some Pathos by Faye Emerson.

Overall it is a Weary Movie that Reflects the Weariness of the War and by this Time Most Folks, Germans or Americans, were so Drained of Emotion by Their Losses that Another Melodramatic Story was just Tiresome. That is Good Description of the Film...Tiresome.

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.

Berlin is being bombed as the war approaches. In the Hotel Berlin, the Gestapo is searching for underground leader Martin Richter. Other Nazis are planning to escape to America. The hotel is a hot bed of Nazis, military, refugees, celebrities, and everyday Germans trying to survive as they wait for the inevitable defeat.

This is trying to imagine Berlin as Casablanca. It's a misreading of the situation which they wouldn't understand back in the day. They know the facts of the extermination but they don't have the sense of it yet. It's also a bit messy in terms of the story. It's unlikely that the German underground has that many survivors by that point. There is a high-minded discussion of morality. All in all, it cannot be great because it doesn't understand the Germany on the ground.

Hollywood was probably just as good and sick of making this sort of anti-Nazi propaganda picture as audiences were good and sick of seeing them. This stale, bitter melodrama has little to recommend it except for Peter Lorre's heartfelt tour de force as a former political prisoner who is (rather implausibly) released from a concentration camp to join the underground.

What a fascinating film. This movie was filmed before the war ended, but when it was clear Nazi Germany was losing - the hotel feels like a sinking ship. The film is way darker and much more complicated than most studio films at the time about the time during or leading up to WWII, and about Germany. There are some incredibly tense moments, as you figure out who is pro Nazi and who is not. and as the characters figure it out for themselves. The Nazi's murderous anti-Semitism isn't glossed over, as it is in so many films from this era. The character to watch: Peter Lorre as Johannes Koenig. He deserved a Best Supporting Actor nod. All your favorite character actors are here - nice to see them in such an intriguing ensemble piece.

I just saw this for the first time on TCM and found it fascinating. It's one of the few movies made during WWII that distinguishes between ordinary German citizens and Nazis. There's very little overt wartime propaganda, until the end (which has a small surprise twist). Although made with a so-called "B" cast, it's every bit as engaging as Grand Hotel. A shame it's not on VHS or DVD, but surely TCM will be showing it again.

Most cineastes have seen 'Grand Hotel' (1932) at least once, if only because of Greta Garbo. It was based on the play and novel 'Menschen im Hotel' by Vicki Baum, whose novels were the basis for numerous Hollywood movies, and who was a best-selling novelist in several languages. Here we see a highly complex ensemble drama set in a hotel again, but this time the action takes place in Berlin just as the Second World War is ending and the Nazi regime is falling apart. The film is well directed by Peter Godfrey, and contains some wonderful performances, one of the best being by Raymond Massey as a German general of the old school, who had been involved in one of the plots to kill Hitler which failed. He sports a monocle with applomb but never over-plays, and portrays the man with distinction and impeccable judgement. Henry Daniell as a keen Gestapo officer also does not over-play, and the restraint he shows is admirable, as Gestapo officers are such obvious targets for over-acting. The numerous dramas and sub-plots in this highly complex film are all satisfactory and convincing. The film has a tremendous dynamism as a multiple-drama, we are swept away by the dilemmas of all the characters, both noble and ignoble, and it all works. This must rank as one of the most successful wartime film dramas, and it is all about people, real people this time rather than cardboard cutouts. This film should be more widely known.

During the World War II years, you would always see many of these actors in this type of war film appearing as Nazi's, namely, Henry Daniell(Von Stetten),"The Body Snatcher",'45, starring Boris Karloff. Even Raymond Massey (Arnim von Dahnwitz),"Arsenic & Old Lace",'44, was a Nazi who was in love with Faye Emerson,(Tillie Weiler),"Nobody Lives Forever",'46, who played a sexy blond charmer that managed to play with both sides, the Naxi's, Polish(Jews) and French. Peter Lorre,(Johannes Koenig),"The Beast With Five Fingers",'46, played an entirely different role as a Professor, who seemed to drink most of the time, but did hate the Nazi's and their cause and managed to do his best making false ID papers and passports. Praise of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill and even Joe Stalin is mentioned during the picture. It just so happens that Faye Emerson, was once married to Elliott Roosevelt in real life and also Skitch Henderson, a famous band leader. You cannot take this film too serious, however, it did tell us about a horrible war and and Devil called Hitler.

Great movie! Andrea King and Faye Emerson fabulous and talented. Very entertaining and historic.

Human complexity shines through "Hotel Berlin," which is a far cry from Hollywood's propagandistic WWII movies. Though it was written fully two years before the fall of Berlin, the story correctly anticipates Germany's inevitable surrender. In fact, it predates the US Army film, "Nazi Concentration Camps," which was introduced as evidence of war crimes at the Nuremberg trials on 29 November 1945, and which is widely considered the first American movie to expose the Nazi death camps-- but Dachau and human experimentation are both mentioned in "Hotel Berlin," which was released months earlier, on 2 March 1945, just nine weeks before Germany's surrender. So the prescient author of the 1943 novel, Vicki Baum, could read the handwriting on the wall: Allies had been bombing Berlin since mid-1940, and in September of '43 the Nazi regime began evacuating civilians from the city.

The most stunningly prescient element of her book is her character General von Dahnwitz (Raymond Massey in the film). From the book: "When he and a small group of high officers had entered into a conspiracy for overthrowing the present High Command they had planned well, and he could see no fault in their strategy. But they had lost all the same. Keith and Fredendorff had taken the consequences, and now it was his turn." Baum created von Dahnwitz and co-conspirator Baron von Stetten (Henry Daniell) the year before there actually was such a conspiracy: Operation Valkyrie, the failed 20 July 1944 attempt on Hitler's life which resulted in the execution of four conspirators. In both the book and movie, Von Dahnwitz opts for preemptive suicide. By the way, screenwriters Jo Pagano and Alvah Bessie are often wrongly credited with adding the Operation Valkyrie idea, but it was Baum's. They did, however, substantially change other elements of her novel.

The hotel is occupied by Nazis, headed by George Coulouris as Joachim Helm, a ruthless SS-Gruppenführer at least until he is thrown down an elevator shaft by resistance leader Martin Richter (Helmut Dantine) with help from a pageboy unfortunately named Adolf (Richard Tyler). Alan Hale uses none of his considerable comic chops to play Plottke, and he's given a Nazi uniform (in the book, he's a thieving old Nazi party horse being squeezed by Helm). Kurt Kreuer plays a major who is played like a fiddle by a famous actress and Nazi sympathizer, Lisa Dorn (Andrea King).

Dorn is one of two key female characters, look-alikes who couldn't be more opposite. Tillie Weiler (Faye Emerson, showing impressive range), is an informant for the Allies who a hotel resident who has been reduced to prostitution. She was in love with Sim Baruch, a Jewish man who dies in the book but lives in the film, and there is a strongly flavored scene between Tillie and with his mother Frau Baruch (a wonderful Helene Thimig).

The main action centers on Richter, who knows that he was allowed to escape from Dachau so the SS could use him to track down other members of the resistance. In the hotel, he reunites with a friend from Dachau, the scientist Johannes Koenig (Peter Lorre), who is a broken man, a drunk after having been forced to experiment on people (in the book, Koenig was "the Reich's great poet"). The most powerful scene in the film is their long conversation, questioning if there are any good Germans, or indeed any good people, left on Earth. "Incurable," Koenig judges mankind.

Events were quickly unfolding during the last few months of World War Two. There was at least one Hollywood production trying to keep up with the fast occurring news out of Europe. Warner Brothers March 1945 "Hotel Berlin," was released to the public two months before Germany capitulated, ending WW2 at least on the European front. Leading up to the film's premier, its producers had to constantly revise the script and reshoot new scenes to make the movie relevant.

"Hotel Berlin" is similar to the Best Picture Oscar winner 1932 "Grand Hotel" not only for its setting in the German capital but as a good example of a portmanteau film, where several short stories are stitched together to make a cohesive movie. The movie's hotel in early 1945 oozes with several devious Nazi officers and spies, all traumatized by the obvious eminent downfall of the Third Reich. "Hotel Berlin" is noteworthy as one of Hollywood's earliest descriptions of Nazi-run concentration camps. The revelation of such extermination prisons emerged one month after the film's release when the Allies' discovered the horrors. Film reviewer Michael Atkinson commented, "You won't see another movie made on American soil that so dares to attends to its dread of the war's end, and its day of reckoning." Based on the 1943 novel of the same name by Vicki Baum, who earlier wrote the 1929 "Menschen im Hotel' ('Grand Hotel'), "Hotel Berlin" largely deals with those associated with the Nazi machinery who are looking for a way out of being implicated. There are some who belong to the underground movement, including Martin Richter (Helmut Dantine), one of its leaders hiding in the hotel after escaping the Dachau concentration camp. The hotel is littered with civilians who are stoolies informing the Nazis on suspected resistors, such as Tillie Weiler (Faye Emerson), who desperately wants a new pair of shoes. Collaborator Lisa Dorn (Andrea King), an actress, is another tattletaler looking for a way out of battered Berlin while revealing Richter's whereabouts. The Nazi officers lodging in the hotel consist of General von Dahnwitz (Raymond Massey), the last of the German Army higher-ups implicated in the plot to assassinate Hitler. Officer Hermann Plotke (Alan Hale) has a past of stealing from the government, while Nazi loyalist Von Stetten (Henry Daniel) is clandestinely hightailing it to South America with others to organize a future return to Germany to establish a Fourth Reich.

The key figure to "Hotel Berlin" is Professor Johannes Koenig (Peter Lorre), who has been recruited by Von Stetten to provide the medical care for the Nazi's South American colony. But the professor has seen too much at Dachau to care about the Nazi cause. His observation of seeing "6,000 people in 24 hours!" perish in gas chambers was an insightful statement considering it was a last minute insertion in the picture before the camps were captured by the U. S. Army. It's ironic actress Faye Emerson plays a German collaborator in "Hotel Berlin" considering she just married President Franklin Roosevelt's son, Colonel Elliot Roosevelt. Millionaire Howard Hughes had earlier arranged a first date between Faye and the still married Elliot. Their elaborate wedding was paid for by Hughes, and was held on the rim of the Grand Canyon. After the war the couple lived with widow Eleanor at Hyde Park, New York, while Faye was commuting to Hollywood for several more films. She later married Skitch Henderson, NBC's 'Tonight Show's' band leader for a number of years.

Critics hailed "Hotel Berlin" as a "socko" production. Film reviewer Hal Astell described the movie as "not difficult to follow the subplots and it's not difficult to see the big picture, that depiction of a time when everything is changing. However, there's so much depth to be found in that change that we could watch the film half a dozen times and still find something new."