We stumbled upon this film whilst doing research during our stay at the Ladbrooke Hotel. It's a brilliant film and I really enjoyed it - interesting for me, as I certainly have, in the past, held a slight bias against black and white films. This film smashed that to bits.

The Grand Hotel opens with a brilliant montage of the main characters all talking in phone booths, essentially setting up why they are there so that the viewer is up to speed.

One of the opening shots of the film that show how the whole thing was shot on a set.

Another beautiful element to this film is the character of Dr Otternschlag, a cynical WWI veteran and doctor who lives at the hotel. He is present in the background for the entire film, watching the lives of all these other characters and chipping in with his thoughts every now and again. In the beginning of the film, Dr Otternschlag muses as he stands in the grand lobby:

“Grand Hotel. People coming, going. Nothing ever happens.”

Wise as ever, the Doctor makes an astute point; guests stay for a night, or perhaps even a week - either way, nothing ever really changes from the hotel's point of view. The film is awash with a myriad of lives all smashing into each other, becoming entwined in each others business, and the hotel is the thing that brings all of these incredibly different people together. Dr Otternschlag appears to reside at the hotel, and it seems that he has lived there for some time. As time goes on, it is easy to conclude that the character of Dr Otternschlag symbolises the hotel itself. In one scene, he goes to each hotel clerk to see if he has any mail, all the while dodging the main characters. No one seems to notice him, and he moves amongst the guests like a ghost. He is significantly older than the other guests. He also has a very high social standing, mimicking the age and grandeur of the hotel.

As he sits drinking alone at the bar, he tells another character -

"What do you do in the Grand Hotel? Eat. Sleep. Loaf around. Flirt a little. Dance a little. A hundred doors leading to one hall, and no one knows anything about the person next to them. And when you leave, someone occupies your room, lies in your bed, and that's the end."

As the film draws to its climatic ending - by which time there has been a robbery, an affair and a murder - Dr Otternschlag echoes his previous observation as he delivers the film's epitaph whilst watching a new collection of guests arrive:

“Grand Hotel. Always the same. People come, people go. Nothing ever happens.”

The Hotel is the stage for these characters to perform; what happens to them in the hotel will define them for the rest of their lives and in some cases - like poor, dying Otto Kringelein - they have been trying all their lives to get to the hotel. However, the doctor, like the hotel, is destined to remain confined in the eternal ennui of the Grand Hotel's customers - the flow of which is endless. Basically, he has seen it all before.

My initial drawing of Dr Otternschlag the character that embodies the hotel.

The first thing I wanted to do was try to recreate that beautiful, onscreen blur that old black and white films have. I did this by changing my normal working process from starting with a red background to working with a black background. Not a massive change, but it quite radically changed the feel of the artwork. It is a relatively simple image, but I think that is what makes the image work. The smokey background contrasts well with the main character. The real test will be to see how this type of image works with a more complex concept.

Looking at a number of promotional images for the film, they often had the same golden glow. Using this as inspiration, I decided to push the image even further and see if I could find a similar colour scheme. I think that, symbolically, this golden glow represents the golden era of film. What I want is for people to subconsciously make that connection; even if it's not something they conciously recognise, they will understand the feeling the image is suppose to give.

Dr Otternschlag with orange/gold colour scheme added.

I am talking about aesthetics here. However, it does feel like I am really starting to carve out a strong voice for the project. The concept will come as the story starts to form. An idea that is really sticking is to use The Grand Hotel and it’s characters as inspiration, but bring it up to date somehow. I think the topic of loneliness within the film will really strike a chord with the modern generation.

An attempt at finding a complimenting colour.

an unlikely direction but the colours do compliment each well. It will depend on the images context.