The Grand Budapest Hotel


 

The Film

The Grand Budapest Hotel is a 2014 comedy film directed by Wes Anderson. The screenplay by Anderson is from a story by Anderson and Hugo Guinness, inspired by the writings of Stefan Zweig. It stars Ralph Fiennes as a concierge who is framed for murder, and teams up with one of his employees to prove his innocence. The film features a truly wonderful ensemble cast, including Tony Revolori, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Jude Law, Harvey Keitel, Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton and Tom Wilkinson.

The film is a British-American-German co-production, and was filmed in Germany.

The Grand Budapest Hotel was released to general acclaim from film critics, and many included it in year-end top 10 lists.

The film received 11 BAFTA nominations, more than any other film, including Best Film and Best Director for Anderson, and Best Actor for Fiennes. It won the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, and garnered three more Golden Globe Award nominations, including Best Director for Anderson.

It also received nine Academy Award nominations, the joint most (with Birdman) for the ceremony, including Best Picture and Best Director. It won the Academy Awards for Best Production Design, Best Original Score, Best Costume Design and Best Makeup and Hairstyling.


Cinema Trailer

 

 


Cast

Ralph Fiennes as Monsieur Gustave H.
Tony Revolori as Young Zero Moustafa
Adrien Brody as Dmitri Desgoffe und Taxis
Willem Dafoe as J.G. Jopling
Jeff Goldblum as Deputy Vilmos Kovacs
Saoirse Ronan as Agatha
Edward Norton as Inspector Henckels
F. Murray Abraham as Old Zero Moustafa
Mathieu Amalric as Serge X.
Jude Law as The Author as a Young Man
Harvey Keitel as Ludwig
Bill Murray as Monsieur Ivan
Léa Seydoux as Clotilde
Jason Schwartzman as Monsieur Jean
Tilda Swinton as Madame Céline Villeneuve Desgoffe und Taxis (Madame D.)
Tom Wilkinson as The Author as an Old Man
Owen Wilson as Monsieur Chuck
Bob Balaban as M. Martin
Giselda Volodi (it) as Serge's sister
Waris Ahluwalia as M. Dino
Neal Huff as Lieutenant
Lisa Kreuzer as Grande Dame
Florian Lukas as Pinky
Karl Markovics as Wolf
Larry Pine as Mr. Mosher
Daniel Steiner as Anatole
Fisher Stevens as M. Robin
Wallace Wolodarsky as M. Georges (as Wally Wolodarsky)


Production

The Grand Budapest Hotel is a British-American-German co-production of Wes Anderson's American Empirical Pictures (US), Grand Budapest Limited (UK), Indian Paintbrush (US), and Neunzehnte Babelsberg Film GmbH (Germany). The film was funded by the German Federal Film Fund (DFFF), Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung, Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg as well as Medien-und Filmgesellschaft Baden-Württemberg.

Anderson and Guinness' story was inspired by several works by the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig, particularly the novella Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman (1927), the novel Beware of Pity (1939) and his autobiography The World of Yesterday (1934–42). Wes Anderson suggested editor Barney Pilling watch Ernst Lubitsch's The Shop Around the Corner and the films of Jacques Tati as references.

It was filmed entirely on location in Germany, mainly in Görlitz and other parts of Saxony as well as at Studio Babelsberg. Principal photography began in January 2013 on location in Berlin and Görlitz. One of the principal locations was the defunct Görlitzer Warenhaus, a huge Jugendstil department store with a giant atrium, one of the few such department stores in Germany to survive World War II. It served as the atrium lobby of the hotel. Filming concluded in March 2013.

Anderson shot the film in three aspect ratios, 1.33, 1.85, and 2.35:1, one for each timeline.

For wide shots of the hotel, Anderson used a three metre tall handmade miniature model. He felt that, since audiences would know that the shot was artificial, computer-generated effects or otherwise, "The particular brand of artificiality that I like to use is an old-fashioned one." He had previously used miniatures in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and more extensively in Fantastic Mr. Fox.

In designing the hotel, Anderson and production designer Adam Stockhausen undertook extensive research, looking at vintage images at the Library of Congress of hotels and European vacation spots, as well as existing locales such as the pastel-pink Palace Bristol Hotel, prominently featured on movie advertisements, and the Grandhotel Pupp in the spa town of Karlovy Vary (Carlsbad), Czech Republic and the Grandhotel Gellért in Budapest. The model used varying scales: the hotel model was 14 feet long and 7 feet deep, the tree-spotted hill on which it stood was a different scale, and finally the funicular railway in the foreground was built to a third scale to capture it best cinematically.

The painting in the film, Boy with Apple, a Renaissance masterpiece by the artist Johannes Van Hoytl the Younger, is a fictional piece commissioned by Anderson and painted by Michael Taylor. The painting took four months to prepare for the film. Likewise the much sought after pastry, Herr Mendl's courtesan au chocolat, is a humorous fictional creation of Wes Anderson's, as a symbol of the courtesan lifestyle of the concierge, the triple tier form of the story, and as an element to escape prison. The bespoke pastry was produced by a local baker in Görlitz. The brief was to come up with something related to a classic religieuse, which is French for 'nun', with chocolate covered stacked profiteroles resembling a nun in black robes. Anderson worked with the baker to perfect the final look.

The widow's mansion was filmed partially within Schloss (castle) Waldenberg. The fake newspapers in the film feature mainly original text, but also use some excerpts from three Wikipedia articles.

The Visual Effects were undertaken by the German VFX Company LUXX Studios.



Soundtrack

The soundtrack of the film is composed by Alexandre Desplat, who worked with Anderson previously on Fantastic Mr. Fox and Moonrise Kingdom. It is co-produced by Anderson with music supervisor, Randall Poster; they, too, worked together on Moonrise Kingdom. The original music is by Desplat, along with Russian folk songs together with pieces composed by Öse Schuppel, Siegfried Behrend, and Vitaly Gnutov, and performed by the Osipov State Russian Folk Orchestra.

Wes Anderson and Randall Poster chose a balalaika to establish the musical voice of the film. They gathered two orchestras with a total of 35 balalaika musicians for the recording of the soundtrack, including the France-based "Saint Georges" Balalaika Orchestra and the State Academic Russian Folk Ensemble "Russia" from Moscow. Desplat’s use of the balalaika begins with “Moustafa” but it returns over and over again. Other instruments in this soundtrack include alphorns, whistles, organ, male choir, bells and cimbalom.

The 32 tracks, with orchestral elements, keyboard instruments and balalaikas, feature eclectic variations and central European melodic themes. Balalaikas are used in "Overture: M. Gustave H" and church organs in "Last Will and Testament". A music box interlude punctuates "Up the Stairs / Down the Hall", and there are haunted-house piano stylings in "Mr. Moustafa". Harpsichords and strings are featured in the baroque piece, "Concerto for Lute and Plucked Strings I. Moderato". The opening song, the Appenzell yodel "s'Rothe-Zäuerli" by Ruedi and Werner Roth, is from the Swiss folk group's Öse Schuppel's album Appenzeller Zäuerli.

Soundtrack Album Track listing

All songs written and composed by Alexandre Desplat, except where noted.

1. "s'Rothe-Zäuerli" (Öse Schuppel) 1:12
2. "The Alpine Sudetenwaltz" 0:36
3. "Mr. Moustafa" 3:03
4. "Overture: M. Gustave H" 0:30
5. "A Prayer for Madame D" 1:20
6. "The New Lobby Boy" 2:17
7. "Concerto for Lute and Plucked Strings I. Moderato" (Siefried Behrend and DZO Chamber Orchestra) 2:52
8. "Daylight Express to Lutz" 2:16
9. "Schloss Lutz Overture" 0:32
10. "The Family Desgoffe Und Taxis" 1:49
11. "Last Will and Testament" 2:16
12. "Up the Stairs/Down the Hall" 0:27
13. "Night Train to Nebelsbad" 1:44
14. "The Lutz Police Militia" 0:49
15. "Check Point 19 Criminal Internment Camp Overture" 0:11
16. "The Linden Tree" (Osipov State Russian Folk Orchestra and Vitaly Gnutov) 2:24
17. "J.G. Jopling, Private Inquiry Agent" 1:28
18. "A Dash of Salt (Ludwig's Theme)" 1:32
19. "The Cold-Blooded Murder of Deputy Vilmos Kovacs" 2:47
20. "Escape Concerto" 2:12
21. "The War (Zero's Theme)" 1:01
22. "No Safe-House" 1:32
23. "The Society of the Crossed Keys" 2:21
24. "M. Ivan" 1:15
25. "Lot 117" 0:30
26. "Third Class Carriage" 1:20
27. "Canto at Gabelmeister's Peak" 5:35
28. "A Troops Barracks (Requiem for the Grand Budapest)" 5:18
29. "Cleared of All Charges" 1:10
30. "The Mystical Union" 1:26
31. "Kamarinskaya" (Osipov State Russian Folk Orchestra and Vitaly Gnutov) 2:43
32. "Traditional Arrangement: "Moonshine"" 3:21

Total length: 59:50